I took a deep breath and tried to remember if I’d brushed my teeth. Didn’t matter—?if I hadn’t, it wasn’t going to happen. I petted Maggie as she lay next to me on the bed.
Before I nodded off, I thought about what my dad had said—?that life wasn’t all nice and neat like a book, and life didn’t have a plot filled with characters who said intelligent and beautiful things. But he wasn’t right about that. See, my dad said intelligent and beautiful things. And he was real. He was the most real thing in the entire world. So why couldn’t I be like him?
I got an idea in my head, so I went on the Internet and started fishing around for information. I found a discussion: “Nature vs. Nurture in Psychology. This debate within psychology is concerned with the extent to which particular aspects of behavior are a product of either inherited (i.e., genetic) or acquired (i.e., learned) characteristics.”
I read some articles, and it seemed to me that nobody really knew the answer to that question. To my question: What mattered most? What was it that made my engine run—?the genetic characteristics I got from my biological father or the characteristics I acquired from my father, the man who raised me?
Which of my fathers was going to have the big say on the man I would become?
Me (in the Dark)
I WOKE UP AT 3:14 in the morning. I’d had a dream about walking in the rain. In the dream, I was lost. I thought of the first day of school, when the rain had come down on me and I’d felt so alone. I stared at my cell phone. I couldn’t catch up with what was happening. Sam and her scare with that bastard Eddie. I did not want to go there. Sam and her mother. I did not want to go there. Me and my mom’s letter. I did not want to go there. Mima and cancer. I did not want to go there. Me and the changes I felt churning inside me. I did not want to go there. Me and college and the future and the stupid admissions essay I hadn’t even thought about writing. I did not want to go there.
So I started thinking about my family and all the good things I remembered about them: the time my Uncle Mickey whisked me up in his arms when a loose dog was heading straight for my throat; the morning Aunt Evie wound up in a hospital because she fell off a ladder putting up Christmas lights, and the string of cuss words that came out of her mouth as she lay on the ground; the afternoon Popo fell off the roof and just dusted himself off, laughing, Mima shaking her head and making the sign of the cross; the weekend Uncle Mickey spent in jail and missed my birthday party; the summer morning when I was throwing rocks at a wasps’ nest and wound up in the ER, my Aunt Lulu rubbing some kind of ointment on me for three days in a row; the summer I spent at Mima’s because my dad was teaching in Barcelona, and the barbecues we had at Mima’s, me counting all the beer cans and the money I got from the aluminum recycling place; and the time we built a human pyramid in our backyard on my fifteenth birthday and I got to be the top of the pyramid. It was as if all the scenes of my life were running through my brain like a pack of dogs running through the streets, dogs running and running, unable to stop even though they were tired.
I smiled to myself. A lot of people in the world had really shitty lives, and it wasn’t even their fault. Like Fito. Some people were just born into the wrong family or adopted by the wrong family, or they were born with something broken inside them. There wasn’t anything broken inside my dad, even though some people thought there was because he was gay. But those people were wrong. They didn’t know him.
Me. And My Fists.
I WALKED PAST THE guy I punched in the stomach for calling me a pinche gringo. And he gave me this look. Part of me wanted to say I’m sorry and I’m really not that guy. But, well. I was that guy. I was wondering if I shouldn’t confess that incident to my father, because I mostly told him what was going on with me. But I hadn’t really put anything into words yet. Sam always said, “If you can’t put it into words, then you just don’t know.”
I’m making a fist.
This is my fist.
I want to punch a wall and tell God to make Mima well. And after that, punch Him too.
I want to punch Eddie’s lights out and make him tell Sam he’s sorry.
I kept thinking I just might turn out like the guy whose genes live in me. And I kept hating that thought.
Sam
SAM CALLED ME after school. She had stayed home sick.
“Are you really sick?”
“Yup. Sick of Sylvia.”
“What happened?”
“We got into an argument.”
“Like that’s news.”
“Fuck you.” Sometimes, when Sam and her mother got into a catfight, Sam went into a funk. The other thing that told me she was in a super-bad space was that she had called me. We didn’t talk on the phone much. We mostly texted.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Of course I wanna fucking talk about it. I called you, didn’t I?”
“I think you should come over,” I said.
“Okay.”
“I’ll make you something to eat.”
“I’m fucking starving.”
“Okay, okay, enough with the F word.”
“Am I offending you, Sally?”
“There are other words in your lexicon. Use your imagination.”
“Straight-edger.”
“Sewer for a mouth.”
“White boy.”
“Bad-boy lover.”
I walked into my dad’s studio. He was looking through old photographs. “Hi,” I said.
He smiled at me. “Hi.”
“Whatcha doin’?”
“I’m looking for a picture of Mima. One in particular.”
“How come?’
“I need it for a painting.”
I nodded.
“Your Aunt Evie and I and Mima are leaving for Scottsdale tomorrow afternoon.” We sort of studied each other for a moment. “I know you want to come—”
I interrupted him. “Dad, I’ll hold down the fort.”
He smiled—?then laughed. “You remember?”
I nodded. “I remember.”
It’s what he told me to do the first time he left me alone in the house.
He looked at me. “I’m going to be honest with you.”
“You’ve always been honest with me, Dad.”
“As far as you know.”
I laughed. “As far as I know.”
“I’m a little scared. No, let me start this again. I’m a lot scared.”
“Mima?”
“Yeah. I have this feeling. You know what I’m trying to get at? You’ll have to be patient with me. It’s a little like learning how to speak a new language. It’s not something you master easily.”
Sam texted: Send Maggie outside to greet me.
I opened the front door and watched as Maggie ran toward Sam, her tail wagging. I watched the familiar lick on the face, Sam’s smile, and then the hug.
Sam and Maggie leaped up the front porch steps. Sam looked me over. “You know, you really should get a tattoo.”
“It’s not me.”
“You’re right. It isn’t you. I like you the way you are. More or less.”
“More or less?”
“Yeah. I like that you’re not like the other boys I like.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You sound disappointed, Sally.”
“Well—”
“What?”
“Nothing . . . What if you discovered I was someone else? You know, someone who turned out to be not who you thought I was?”
“I know you, Sally.”
“Do you?”
“You’re not making sense. Come on. Let’s go in.”