Things did get back to normal, but I felt that something had changed in me, and I didn’t know how to put it into words. I framed my leaves and the note from Mima between two pieces of glass and hung them in the living room. It didn’t seem right to keep them all to myself.
I was now in the habit of taking out my mom’s letter and putting it on my desk in the morning. Then putting it back at night.
Me and Fito and Sam got into going to the movies. We argued about which movies to see. Sam and Fito, they got into it some days. I’d always let Sam have her way. But Fito, man, he wasn’t about to let have Sam have her way all the time. I guess he was tired of being on the short end of the stick. I loved watching them.
Lina had everything fixed that was wrong with Sam’s house. She and Fito had a mutual admiration society going on. Which was sweet. The Realtor hung up a FOR SALE sign. Sam posed me and Fito leaning on the sign, and she posted it on her wall. Of course she did. Her and her Facebook.
Yeah, life was normal. School, movies, homework, studying. School, movies, homework, studying. Yeah, and I still ran into Enrique Infante, who still called me faggot. I stopped him one day and asked, “Is that faggot with one g or two?”
He didn’t like my joke, but I thought it was pretty funny. Sam and Fito thought it was hilarious.
I woke up one Saturday morning. A cold front had come in. No snow, but it was really cold. I walked into the kitchen, and Sam and Dad were talking.
I poured myself a cup of coffee. “Am I interrupting?”
“No,” Sam said. “Dad and I were talking about the adoption thing.”
“And?”
“Well,” Sam said, “ever since I brought the subject up, I started calling him Dad. And it felt right. And it kinda, it kinda was enough. Just to be able to call—” She looked at my dad. “Just to be free to call you Dad. I don’t need the adoption thing. I think I just wanted to know that I belonged. Which is stupid. Because I’ve always belonged. But I still want to change my last name to my mother’s.”
I really liked the smile on my dad’s face.
Sam. Me. Fito.
TWO WEEKS AFTER Mima died, Sam and I walked over to the Circle K. Fito was getting off at eleven, and it was a Friday and we didn’t have any plans. We got to the store just as Fito was clocking out. We grabbed some Cokes and some popcorn and headed to Sam’s house.
We put on an old vinyl album. Dusty Springfield. Sam loved Dusty Springfield. We were hanging out and talking, and Sam kept eyeing Fito’s journals. I knew she was going to start digging any minute. “So, Fito, how long have you been keeping a journal?”
“How’d you know I kept one?”
“All those volumes sitting on that little shelf.”
“She likes to get into everyone’s business,” I said.
She pointed at me. “Your business”—?and then she pointed at Fito—?“your business equals my business.”
“And I thought I was bad at math,” I said.
“You are bad at math, Sally.” I got the look. Yup, Sam was undeterred. “Did it help, Fito, keeping a journal?”
“Yeah. It was almost like having a life. I guess I started when I was in seventh grade. Helped me keep my head on straight. Gave me someone to talk to—?even if that someone was just me. You know, I used to go to the library and read. And one day I went to the museum and I was walking around and shit and looking at the art, and before I left, I went into the museum store and they had this really cool leather-bound journal with all these blank pages. So a couple days later I walked into that store and bought it. That’s how it started. And the books I read made me think of things, and I wrote stuff down.”
Sam grabbed one of the journals and handed it to him. “Read us something.”
“No way. That’s private shit.”
“Give me a fucking break, Fito.”
Fito took the journal away from her.
“You’re not gonna win this one, Fito,” I said. “Trust me. If not tonight, some other night. She’ll hound you and hound you till she wears you down.”
Sam had her arms crossed. “That’s how you talk about me behind my back?”
“You happen to be in the room,” I said.
Sam gently took Fito’s journal from him. “I’ll read something,” she said.
Fito was quiet. Then he said, “Are you always like this?”
“Bossy, you mean? Yup. Some people would call it leadership skills.”
Fito said, “Okay, read something. Go ahead. But if you laugh, I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”
“Fair enough,” Sam said. She opened the page and started reading:
“Sometimes, I see myself standing on a beach, my bare feet buried in the wet sand. And there’s no one on the beach, just me, but I don’t feel alone. What I feel is alive. And it seems like the whole world belongs to me. The cool breeze whistles through my hair, and something tells me I have heard that song all my life. I’m watching the waves hit the sand, the ebb and flow of the waves crashing against the distant cliffs. The ocean is ever moving—?and yet there is a stillness that I envy.
“In the distance, I can see a storm coming in, the dark clouds and the lightning on the horizon moving toward me. I wait and I wait and I wait for the storm. And then it comes, and the rains wash away the nightmares and the memories. And I’m not afraid.”
Sam put the journal down. “This is awesome, Fito.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. “You can sing, and you can write, and you have beautiful thoughts.”
“Nah,” he said. “I think I’d just read The Old Man and the Sea or something. Anyway, it’s bullshit. It’s not like I’ve ever seen the ocean. I don’t know what the hell I’m talkin’ about.”
“Why do you dumb yourself down, Fito? Why do you do that?” Sam was being fierce again.
“You’re brilliant as hell,” I said.
“You think I’d survive on the streets talking like a fucking book? How long do you think I’d last? I dumb myself down, Sam, to fucking survive. That’s how I roll. I carry cigarettes around even though I don’t smoke. I hand them out. Make friends. And people won’t mess with me. I carry change around, and if someone needs some money, I hand them some change. I carry around M&M’s. If I’m sitting around, I pop some. Some guy’s always coming up to me and saying, ‘Got any more of those?’ And I give him some. I don’t like trouble, and I’ve learned to get along, and it’s not any good to pretend you’re smart. Not out there.
“And you know, Sam, it’s not as if I’m the only one who does that dumbing-down shit. What the hell do you think you’re doing when you go out with all those guys? Not a damn one of them is your equal. You know that, don’t you, Sam?”
“Yeah, I know that.”
Then Fito looked at me. “You do it too. You’re better than a fist, Sally. Yeah, you are. You have this letter from your mom, and all of a sudden you can’t read. Yeah, we all dumb ourselves down.”