Dad and I went out into the cold morning and played catch. We didn’t talk for a long time. Then he said to me as I caught his throw, “When are you going to let me read your essay?”
“It’s not that great. Good thing not all the schools I’m applying to require one.”
We kept tossing the ball back and forth. “Still, I’d like to read it.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll get around to it.” I threw him a fastball.
Dad caught my fastball and threw back a fastball of his own. “‘I’ll get around to it’? Really?”
The cold wind was picking up. The weather was always changing. One minute almost warm and sunny, the next minute a cold wind numbing my face.
Fito. Sam. Me.
WE WERE ALL sitting at the dining room table doing our homework. Fito was reading his history text. He liked history. I had no idea why. Sam was looking up something on the Internet for her English essay on Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was her new thing. Me, I was staring at a trig problem. Trig. What the hell was I thinking when I took that class?
Sam glanced at Fito and shut her laptop. “Talk, Fito.”
He stared at her. Then went back to the history book.
“Don’t play dumb.”
“I’m just needin’ some Fito space.”
“You’ve been living in Fito space all your life.”
“It’s got me through so far.”
“You wanna live in exile all your life?”
“Exile?”
“Give me another word, and I’ll go with it.”
“What do you want me to say? That I’m sad and shit?”
“That’s a start.”
“Well, I am sad.”
“I feel you,” she said. “I get sad too.” Then she pointed at me. “Even he gets sad. His Mima’s dying. She’s a beautiful lady. We all have something to be sad about. We’re not pigs, you know. We’re not supposed to live in our own shit.”
That made me and Fito laugh.
“Good,” she said. “Laughter is good. And we do a lot of it. And that’s brilliant. When we laugh together, that’s truly brilliant.”
“Whistling in the dark,” I said.
Fito shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
“What was the plan before your mother died?”
“Get good grades. Finish high school. Go to college.”
“And your mother was gonna pay for all this?”
“Hell, no.”
“Then what’s changed?”
“She’s dead,” Fito said.
“Well, join the club. We all have dead mothers. How about that?”
“This isn’t a joke, Sam,” I said.
“You think I don’t know that?”
“It sucks,” I said.
“Yeah, it sucks.”
“Yeah,” Fito said. “I guess I was hoping that someday my mom would, well, just be a mom.”
Sam was relentless and fierce. “That ship sailed a long time ago, Fito. That was never gonna happen.”
“But I hoped. I had hope. Now it’s gone.”
“No,” Sam said. “It’s not.”
Then Sam got that I-know-all-kinds-of-shit look. “Look, Fito, your mother was an addict. She had a disease. Addiction is a disease. You do know that, don’t you?”
She saw me giving her a look. She sort of glared at me. “Look it up, dude. Don’t you know anything? In the age of information, we choose to live in ignorance.” Then she looked at Fito. “I don’t know if your mother was a good person or not. I do know that she lived stuck in disease and she died of that disease. Don’t judge her. And don’t judge yourself. Maybe she couldn’t love you, Fito. But maybe in her own way she did. She was sick. Just remember that.”
“So now you’re a drug counselor, are you?” I said.
She crossed her arms. “You are no help. No help at all. There are websites, you know.”
“And you know all of them,” I said.
Fito broke up our little conversation. “I didn’t hate my mother,” he said. “I thought I hated her, but I didn’t. I wanted to help her—?but I didn’t know how. I just didn’t.”
Fito + Words = ?
SAM WAS LOOKING for a particular pair of shoes. “I must have left them back at home,” she said. “Home,” she said. “I guess it’s not home anymore.”
We took Maggie with us to Sam’s old house so she could visit Fito. But Fito wasn’t there. I texted him: Where r u?
Fito texted back: Working at the K
Me: We’re at Sam’s picking up shoes Fito: Cool, cool, laters, customers
Sam went through her closet, but there was nothing there. She looked in the closet of the spare bedroom—?and there they were. “Love these shoes,” she said.
“How many pairs of shoes can you love?”
“It’s like Dad says, ‘Love is infinite.’”
“I don’t think he had shoes in mind.”
When we walked back into the living room, Sam stopped. “What are those?”
On a small bookshelf Fito had set up next to the couch was a set of leather books.
Sam walked over and picked one up. She opened it. “Wow,” she said. “It’s a journal. Fito keeps a journal.” She shut it, then picked up another one. “Yup, they’re all journals. Beautiful ones, too.” I thought she was going to start to read the one she was holding.
“Put it down, Sam,” I said.
“He never told us he kept a journal.”
“Is it something we need to know?” Sam had that look on her face. “Don’t answer that question,” I said.
“There’s a whole life inside these journals.”
I knew Fito was in for it.
Sam didn’t have it in her to leave things alone.
Homework. Mothers.
I WAS WHINING at the dining room table as I did my homework. “Why do they make us take math?”
Sam said, “Just shut up and work.”
“Don’t feel like working,” I said.
“I’m the one who used to say things like that.”
“Maybe we’ve traded emotional spaces.”
“How’s it feel to be out of control?”
“Shut up,” I said.
I got up and went to the refrigerator. I don’t know what I was looking for. There were some store-bought flour tortillas, and I thought of Mima. And I don’t know why, but I thought of my mom.
As if Sam were on the same wavelength, she said, “It’s time to do something with Mom’s ashes.”
“What are you planning?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ve been giving it some thought. And I think I know.”
“You want to fill us in?”
“Yeah,” Fito said.
“We’ll do it soon,” she said.
“That’s all?”
“Yeah,” she said.
Then she looked at me with that question mark on her face. “Where’s your mom buried?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I never really asked.”
“I think you should ask.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Sam turned her gaze toward Fito. “Where’d they bury your mom, Fito?”
“They cremated her.”
“How’d you find out?”
“I called my uncle. He said he was sorry about the whole thing at my mom’s funeral.”
“You close to him?”
“Nah.”
“You want to be?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“He’s a dealer. That’s where he gets his money. He thinks he’s all fuckin’ superior because he doesn’t do drugs and shit. He lives off addicts. He’s scum. Let’s not talk about it.” Then he looked at me. “Let’s make coffee.”
I nodded.
Fito kept talking. “Anyway, they spread her ashes in the middle of the desert.”
“Did she like the desert?”