Then there was a loud clap of thunder—?and the rain came pouring down.
I couldn’t see anything in front of me as the storm surrounded me. I kept walking, my head down.
I just kept walking.
I felt the heaviness of my rain-soaked clothes. And for the first time in my life, I felt alone.
Me. Dad. Trouble.
I KNEW I WAS in deep trouble. Deep, deep. We’re talking deep shit. My dad, who was sometimes strict but always thoughtful, and who never yelled, came into my room. My dog, Maggie, was lying on the bed next to me. She always knew when I was feeling bad. So there we were, Maggie and me. I guess you could say I was feeling sorry for myself. That was a strange feeling, too, because feeling sorry for myself was definitely not one of my hobbies. That would be one of Sam’s.
Dad pulled the chair away from my desk and sat down. He smiled. I knew that smile. He always smiled before he gave me one of his serious talks. He ran his fingers through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. “I just got a phone call from the principal at your school.”
I think I averted my eyes.
“Look at me,” he said.
I looked into his eyes. We looked at each other for a long instant. I was glad I didn’t see anger. And then he said, “Salvador, it’s not okay to hurt other people. And it certainly isn’t okay to go around punching people in the face.”
When he called me Salvador, I knew it was serious business. “I know, Dad. But you don’t know what he said.”
“I don’t care what he said. No one deserves to be physically attacked just because he said something you didn’t like.”
I didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally I decided I needed to defend myself. Or at least justify my actions. “He said something really shitty about you, Dad.” On another day, I might have cried. But I was still too mad to cry. Dad always said that there was nothing wrong with crying and that if people did more of it, well then, the world would be a better place. Not that he took his own advice. And even though I wasn’t crying, I guess you could say I was a little ashamed of myself—?yeah, I was—?otherwise I wouldn’t have been hanging my head. I felt my dad’s arms holding me, and then I just leaned against him and whispered, “He called you a faggot.”
“Oh, son,” he said, “do you think I’ve never heard that word? I’ve heard worse. That word doesn’t carry any truth, Salvie.” He took me by the shoulders and looked at me. “People can be cruel. People hate what they don’t understand.”
“But, Dad, they don’t want to understand.”
“Maybe they don’t. But we have to find a way to discipline our hearts so that their cruelty doesn’t turn us into hurt animals. We’re better than that. Haven’t you ever heard the word civilized?”
Civilized. My father loved that word. That’s why he loved art. Because it civilized the world. “Yeah, Dad,” I said. “I do understand. But what happens when a friggin’ barbarian like Enrique Infante is breathing down your neck? I mean”?—?I started petting Maggie—?“I mean, Maggie is more human than people like Enrique Infante.”
“I don’t disagree with your assessment, Salvie. Maggie’s very tame. She’s sweet. And some people in this world are lot wilder than she is. Not everyone who walks around on two legs is good and decent. Not everyone who walks on two legs knows how to use their intelligence. Not that you don’t know that already. But you just have to learn to walk away from wild people who like to growl. They might bite. They might hurt you. Don’t go down that road.”
“I had to do something.”
“It’s not a good idea to jump into the sewer to catch a rat.”
“So we just let people get away with things?”
“What exactly was Enrique getting away with? What did he take?”
“He called you faggot, Dad. You can’t just let people take away your dignity.”
“He didn’t take away my dignity. He didn’t take away yours either, Salvie. You really think a punch to the nose changed a damn thing?”
“No one gets to call you names. Not when I’m around.” And then I felt the tears falling down my face. The thing about tears is that they can be as quiet as a cloud floating across a desert sky. The other thing about tears is that they kind of my made my heart hurt. Ouch.
“Sweet boy,” he whispered. “You’re loyal and you’re sweet.”
My dad always called me sweet boy. Sometimes when he called me that, it really pissed me off. Because (1) I wasn’t half as sweet as he thought I was, and (2) what normal boy wants to think of himself as sweet? (Maybe I was going for normal.)
When Dad left the room, Maggie followed him out the door. I guess Maggie thought I was going to be all right.
I lay on the floor for a long time. I thought of hummingbirds. I thought of the Spanish word for them: colibrís. I remembered that Sam had told me that the hummingbird was the Aztec god of war. Maybe I had some war in me. No, no, no, no. It was just one of those things. It wasn’t like it was ever going to happen again. I wasn’t the punching-other-guys-out kind of guy. I wasn’t that guy.
I don’t know how long I lay on the floor that evening. I didn’t show up in the kitchen for dinner. I heard my father and Maggie walk into my darkened room. Maggie jumped on my bed, and my father turned on the light. He had a book in his hand. He smiled at me and placed his hand on my cheek—?just as he’d done when I was a boy. He read to me that night, my favorite passage from The Little Prince, about the fox and the Little Prince and about taming.
I think if someone else had raised me, I might have been a wild and angry boy. Maybe if I’d been raised by the man whose genes I had, maybe I’d be a completely different guy. Yeah, the guy whose genes I had. I hadn’t ever really thought about that guy. Not really. Well, maybe a little.
But my father, the man who was in my room and had turned on the light, he’d raised me. He’d tamed me with all the love that lived inside him.
I fell asleep listening to the sound of my father’s voice.
I had a dream about my grandfather. He was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear him. Maybe it was because he was dead and the living didn’t understand the language of the dead. I kept repeating his name. Popo? Popo?
Funerals and Faggots and Words
THE DREAM ABOUT my Popo and the word faggot got me to thinking. And this was what I was thinking about: Words exist only in theory. And then one ordinary day you run into a word that only exists in theory and meet it face to face. And then that word becomes someone you know.
Funeral.
I met that word when I was thirteen.
That was when my Popo died. I was a pallbearer. Up until then I hadn’t even known what a pallbearer was. You see, there are a lot of other words you meet when you run into the word funeral. You meet all Funeral’s friends: Pallbearer, Casket, Undertaker, Cemetery, Headstone.
It felt so strange to carry my grandfather’s casket to his grave.
I was unfamiliar with the rituals and prayers for the dead.