My father didn’t flinch, didn’t skip a beat. “I happen to be gay. I don’t think that makes me a faggot. I’m also a Mexican-American. I don’t think that makes me a taco bender. I don’t think that makes me a beaner. I don’t think that makes me a spic. And I don’t think that makes me an illegal.” There wasn’t any anger in his voice—?or on his face. It was as if he were a lawyer in a courtroom, trying to make his point to the jury. I could tell he was trying to think of what he was going to say next. He looked at Mr. Infante. “Sometimes,” he said, “our sons don’t fully understand the things they say. But you and I, we’re men. We do understand, don’t we?”
Mr. Cisneros nodded. I didn’t know what that nod meant. I’d never been in his office before. I didn’t know anything about him—?except that Sam said he was an idiot. But Sam thought most adults were idiots, so maybe she wasn’t a reliable source of information regarding Mr. Cisneros.
The room was quiet for a long second or two. Finally Mr. Cisneros arrived at a solution: “Keep away from each other.” Sam would have said it was a chicken-shit solution. And she would have been right about that too.
Mr. Infante and Enrique just sat there, spreading their sullenness around like it was peanut butter. And then Mr. Infante’s voice filled the small office. He pointed his finger at me: “You’re really going to let him get away with this?” That was the first time I really understood why people used the expression stormed away. That’s exactly what Mr. Infante and Enrique did—?they stormed away.
It was hard to read what my father was thinking. Sometimes he had an amazing poker face. Too bad he didn’t like to gamble. Then he looked at me. I knew he wasn’t very happy with me. “I’ll see you after school,” he said. “I want to have a few words with Mr. Cisneros.”
Later, Sam asked me what I thought my dad and Mr. Cisneros had talked about. I told her I didn’t know.
“Don’t you want to know?”
“I guess I don’t.”
“Well, I’d want to know. It’s not as if that conversation had nothing to do with you. Why don’t you want to know?” She crossed her arms. Sam was an arm crosser. “What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anything. There are just certain things I don’t need to know.”
“Need to know? Or want to know?”
“Take your pick, Sammy.”
“Sometimes I don’t get you.”
“There’s not much to get,” I said. “And besides, you’re the one who needs to know—?not me.”
“I don’t need to know,” she said.
“Sure,” I said.
“Sure,” she said.
Later that evening Sam texted me the word for the day—?another one of our games: Wftd = bigotry.
Me: Good one. Use word in sentence Sam: Mr. Cisneros is a party to bigotry Me: Harsh
Sam: Being kind. Btw, u kno Infante means infant Me: Yup
Sam: Yup yup yup
Fito
“MAN, THAT ENRIQUE INFANTE. I mean to tell you, Sal, you made an enemy for life.”
“You hang out with that guy?”
“Nope. He’s always trying to sell me cigarettes. He’s always talkin’ shit. Bad news.”
“It’s not as if I plan on having a long-term relationship with him. He’s not exactly best-friend material.”
That made Fito laugh. “That’s for sure. World’s full of guys like that. Today, he’s sellin’ cigarettes; tomorrow he’ll graduate to sellin’ dope.” Then he shot me a smile. “Didn’t know you liked to pull out your fists and shit. Guy like you, I mean, you got it made in the shade, and you’re pullin’ shit like that.”
“What d’ya mean by that?”
“Dude, you got this great thing goin’, you and your dad. I mean, I know you’re adopted and shit, but you know, you got a good thing.”
“I know. And it’s not as if I’ve ever really felt adopted.”
“That’s cool. Me, I mean, most of the time I feel like I was taken in from the streets because someone had thrown me fuckin’ away. For reals. I mean, that’s how it feels around my house.”
“That sucks,” I said.
“Well, at my house, everything sucks. I mean, my dad’s kinda cool. He wanted to take me with him. That would’ve been the bomb. But he didn’t have a place of his own and shit and he couldn’t find a job and he finally gave up on this place and moved to California to live with his brother. Hell, at least he said goodbye and shit, and he was all broken up about not being able to take me with him and shit. At least I knew he cared. He did. And that’s somethin’.”
“Yeah,” I said, “it is something. It’s more than something.” I felt bad for Fito. And one thing about him, he didn’t go around feeling sorry for himself. I wondered how he turned out to be such a good guy. How did that happen? There didn’t seem to be any logic behind who we turned out to be. None at all.
WFTD = Origin
I RESPECTED FITO, but Sam didn’t like him all that much. She said it was because of his walk. “He doesn’t walk. He slinks. And why does he have to add and shit to the end of every other sentence? What’s that about?” This from the girl who was having a fling with the F word.
I’d read some of the essays Fito had written for school, and he sounded like an intellectual. I mean it. That guy was smart. But he didn’t like parading that fact. Maybe Fito talked like that because of the words people tossed around in his house—?and because he was always wandering the streets. Not because he was looking for trouble, but because he wanted to get the hell out of his house.
I had a theory that everyone has a relationship with words—?whether they know it or not. It’s just that everybody’s relationship with words is different. Dad told me once that we have to be very careful with words. “They can hurt people,” he said. “And they can heal people.” If anyone was careful with words, it was my dad.
But I owe my real awareness of words to Sam. It began when she was in the spelling bee. I was her coach. She had thousands of words on these index cards, and I’d read and pronounce the words and she would spell them. We spent hours and hours and hours getting her ready. We lived and breathed it. She was so focused and fierce. Some days she would break down and cry. She wore herself out. And I was worn out right along with her.
She didn’t win.
And man oh man, was she pissed. “The moron who won didn’t even know the meanings of the words he was spelling,” she said.
I tried to comfort her, but she refused to be comforted.
“Don’t you know the word inconsolable?”
“You can try again next year.”
“Hell, no,” she said. “Fuck words.”
But I knew she’d already fallen in love with words, and she dragged me into that love affair.
That’s when we started the word-for-the-day thing. Wftd.
Yeah. Words. Fito and words. Me and words. Sam and words. As I was thinking about that, the doorbell rang. And there was Sam.
“I was just thinking about you,” I said.
“Anything nice?”
“About how pissed you were when you lost the spelling bee.”
“I’m over it.”
“Sure you are.”
“I didn’t come over to talk about a stupid spelling bee.”
“So what’s up?”
“My mom and I just got into it.”
“Like that’s news.”
“Look, not everybody has conversations like you and your dad. I mean, you guys are so not normal. Fathers and sons do not talk. They do not talk. I mean, sometimes you talk like you’re friends or something.”
“Wrong,” I said. “My father doesn’t pretend to be my friend. Not even close. He’s my father. It’s just that we happen to like each other. I think that’s awesome. Really awesome.”
“Fucking awesome.”
“Why do you like to cuss?”
“Everybody likes to cuss.”
“I don’t.”
“They don’t call you Mr. Excitement for nothing.”
“Who’s they?”