“Still mad?”
“I still give that creep evil looks when I run into him at school.”
“You know how to hold a grudge, don’t you?”
“It’s not always such a bad thing, you know. Keeps a lot of shitheads out of my life.”
She gave me a look because I was laughing.
“You’re laughing at me? Really?”
“What if?”
“What if?”
“Where did our What If game come from?” I don’t know. Maybe I just felt like playing. “It seems like we haven’t played in a long time.”
“Yeah, it does seem that way, doesn’t it?”
“What if,” I said.
“What if,” Sam said.
“What if I were a poet and you were a poet too?”
“If I were a poet, I would write a poem to—” She smiled. “Okay, I need some time with this one.”
I opened the front door to the school building.
“By the end of the day I’ll have mine ready,” she said.
“Me too,” I said.
“And don’t write it during math. You need to pay attention.”
“Bye,” I said.
“Bye,” she said.
“Great day,” I said.
“Great day,” she said.
And then I saw Enrique Infante walking in the other direction. “Faggot,” he said.
I gave him a cheesy smile. “You want I should bash your face in again?”
“Come at me, white boy.”
I almost turned around and went for him. But I kept walking. We were on school grounds. I actually let a thought come between me and my fist reflex.
During lunch, this is what I wrote in my notebook:
If I were a poet
I would write a poem
that would make people’s tongues
fall out every time they said
the word faggot.
I read what I’d written and was pretty proud of myself. But I knew Sam’s was going to be really good, and I wanted to remain competitive, so I thought a minute and then wrote:
If I were a poet
I would write a poem
so beautiful and moving
that it would cure
cancer, and cancer
would never enter
another human being
ever again.
Not ever.
And then I was into it, so I started to write another one:
If I were a poet
I would write a poem
that would make my dad’s heart
smile. And he would never
feel any sadness, and every day
he would wake
to the beauty of the day.
After school, we met at Sam’s locker. “You look smug,” she said.
“I don’t do smug.”
“Oh yeah, you’re all about smug right now. You think you wrote a really outta-this-world cool poem, don’t you?”
“Yup.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see.” Then we cracked up laughing and decided to wait till we got home to read each other’s poems. I guess they were poems. What the hell did I know about poems? The only poem I really liked was this poem called “Autobiographia Literaria” by some guy named Frank O’Hara. I had it on my bulletin board at home. Sam liked to read it to me.
Sam kicked me as I walked. “Did you have a great day?”
“Yeah. We had a substitute in my English class. He didn’t give a rat’s tail about teaching, so Fito and I just texted each other.”
“What were you texting?”
“Fito’s situation at home seems to be getting worse.”
“Well, that’s no bueno.”
“No bueno is right. And then this morning my good friend Enrique Infante walked passed me in the hallway and called me a faggot.”
“He’s a sleaze bucket.”
“Yup. I told him that maybe I’d bash his face in again.”
“No bueno.”
“No bueno is right. But it really pisses me off that he also called me a white boy.”
“Uh-oh.” Sam started laughing.
“You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“But you are a white guy.”
“Really? We’re going to get into this discussion again? Really?”
She messed up my hair and smiled. “Just relax. No worries, Enrique will get his. Yup, that’s what I think.” I wondered if she was up to something. She had that look.
When we got home, I gave Sam my poems. She gave me hers. This is what she wrote:
If I were a poet
I would write a poem
that would make the oceans
clean again.
I would write a poem
so pure that it would rain for days
and when the skies were clear again,
a million stars would fill the summer night.
I would write a poem to make the people see
guns are guns and unworthy of our love.
I would write a poem to make
all the bullets disappear.
I looked at her. “Wow. Mine are kind of stupid compared to yours.”
She smiled at me. “Stupid boy. You’re incapable of stupidity.”
She got up from the couch and took her poem and mine. “I’m going to put them on the refrigerator. So your dad can read them.”
“Good girl,” I said. “He would like that.”
“Yup.”
So Sam took off some of the postcards that were on the refrigerator and replaced them with our poems. “We got to get some new magnets.” Sam was starting to get all domestic on me. Who knew?
Sam and I were studying in the living room. I looked up and saw my dad standing there. “So how are my budding poets?”
I kinda smiled at him. “Sam’s the better poet.”
My father had this incredible look on his face. “Sometimes I love you both so much that I can hardly bear it.” Then he turned around and walked toward the kitchen. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Tacos,” I said.
“Tacos it is.”
I looked at Sam and saw tears running down her face. “What?” I said.
“Your dad. He says things that make me cry.”
“Beautiful things,” I said.
“Yeah, beautiful. How come more guys aren’t like your dad?”
“I have no frickin’ idea.” And then I thought, Because most guys are like my bio father. I had no idea where that thought came from. I didn’t know a damn thing about my bio father.
Dad. Marcos.
I’D BECOME a chronic eavesdropper. That’s what I thought as I stood at the back door and watched my dad and Marcos having an argument in front of Dad’s studio.
My dad had this look on his face that said I am half angry and half hurt. And then I heard him saying: “Marcos, you can’t just walk back into my life as if nothing happened. You can’t just disappear one day and reappear a few years later and expect me to—” And then he stopped in midsentence.
“I said I was sorry, Vicente.”
“Cheapest word in the dictionary.”
“I was scared.”
“I was scared too, Marcos. But I didn’t walk away. You didn’t see me running, did you?”
“Everybody deserves a second chance. Even me. We, Vicente, you and I, we deserve a second chance.”
I watched my dad. He didn’t say anything.
Marcos said, “I know how much I hurt you.”
“Yes, you did hurt me.”
“Vicente, not a day went by when I didn’t think of you.”
“It took you long enough.”
I saw the tears on Marcos’s face.
Right then I witnessed the world they lived in go completely silent. The world was flooding with their tears.
Marcos slowly walked away and left through the side gate.
I stepped away from the doorway and made my way back to my room.
Dad (Marcos) Me