Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club (8 page)

And anyway, after that fight, Marcos and I became friends. Marcos had good fists. But he had a better heart. He was the best friend I ever had. We rode our bikes around the streets of my neighborhood yelling and screaming and laughing. And then one day my bike got stolen.

I never really knew where my mother got the money for us to live. We had an okay house, small, two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, a kitchen. The walls were all painted white—except the yellow and blue kitchen. My mother had a picture of San Martín Caballero in her kitchen. San Martín was a gentleman on a horse and he was offering a beggar his cloak. I don’t know why I remember that. I guess you could say he became my patron saint because I’ve always given beggars on the streets all the change in my pockets. I didn’t have a cloak like San Martín Caballero, but I always had a quarter and a few pennies.

The small house where I grew up was clean—but it was clean because I taught myself how to clean a house. It’s not a bad thing to teach yourself things. And besides, I didn’t want the house I lived in to be dirty and I didn’t want the house to smell bad. I sometimes sprayed the house with my mother’s perfume. Except my room. I didn’t spray my room with anything. It smelled like old books and it probably smelled like me. Maybe my room didn’t smell so good, but I took a shower every day and I always brushed my teeth and combed my hair. And I washed my own clothes.

There wasn’t a father in the house. I didn’t know if my mother had been married or not married and nobody ever said anything about him. I remember asking her once, “Do you have a picture of my father?”

She looked right at me and said, “
Nunca quiero que me preguntes de tu
papá
.” I knew it was serious business because she almost always spoke to me in English. When she spoke to me in Spanish, it meant I’d better listen. She had this thing that I had to learn English, even though I lived in Juárez. She said I was a U.S. citizen and that I should know the language of my country. But Juárez was the only country I knew—and it was the only country I cared about. She’d bring me to El Paso sometimes and I’d play with my cousins and we spoke both languages, English and Spanish. But El Paso wasn’t Juárez and it wasn’t mine and I always felt that I was just a visitor there.

I had a friend named Jorge who lived next door. I liked Jorge’s family because even though my mother disappeared for days, they always watched out for me. And Jorge’s dad was good to me and he would take me and Jorge with him to do things and I sometimes felt like he was my dad—only I knew he wasn’t. I was sad sometimes, but not sad, sad, sad. Just sad in a normal way, I think.

I liked my life when I lived in Juárez. And even though I was sad sometimes, I was also happy sometimes. I loved my mother and it’s not as if she was really mean to me. I knew she had lots of problems. People can’t help it when they have problems. Everyone in the world has problems—even rich people. At least that’s what Jorge’s father said. Jorge’s mother said that maybe it was true that rich people had problems too. But she also said, “If the rich don’t care about the problems of the poor, then why should the poor care about the problems of the rich?”

The rich and the poor, they were big topics of conversation in Jorge’s house. In my house too.

2.

My mother never hit me, not once, not ever, and she kissed me just when I needed to be kissed. She would read books to me in English and I liked
listening to her voice. I asked her where she had learned to read and speak in English. She said her mother had sent her to Loretto High School in El Paso. It was a good school, a Catholic girls’ school. “Those were the best days,” she said, “but we lost all our money.” My mother hated being poor. I told her once, “We’re not so poor.”

She glared at me.

“We have food and a house and—”

She stopped me cold in the middle of my sentence. “What does a boy know about money?”

I didn’t argue with her. My mother didn’t like people to disagree with her.

All my aunts lived in El Paso and sometimes we would stay with them on weekends. My aunts, they weren’t really rich. But they weren’t really poor, either. When we went to El Paso, my mother would take me shopping and buy me clothes. She told me once, “The clothes here are a better quality.” She had this thing about quality. She liked elegant and beautiful things. She had lots of jewelry and she wore it all the time—rings and necklaces and earrings and bracelets. I think she probably thought my father wasn’t a quality man. Or maybe he couldn’t
buy
her quality—elegant, beautiful things. All he gave her was me.

I just couldn’t get my mind off where my mom got the money to buy me clothes, to pay for rent, to buy food, to do anything. She had a car and she had the money to put gas in it and she had nice dresses—but she didn’t work. She told me she did, but I knew she didn’t.

When I was about nine, things started to get weird. My mother started to disappear more and more. I would come home from school and the house would be empty. Sometimes she would be gone for more than a week. She would give me money to buy myself food or whatever I needed. She never
gave me Mexican pesos. It was always American dollars. Sometimes when I woke up in the morning, there was no one home but me. And then sometimes she would spend days and days in bed. I would make her soup. Well, I didn’t actually make the soup. I just went to the store and bought it and opened the can and warmed it up. She didn’t eat it anyway. I didn’t know what was wrong. And I asked her, “Maybe you should go to a doctor?”

“A doctor?” she said.

“Yeah. I think maybe you’re sick.”

She gave me one of her looks. I didn’t like those looks. It was her way of slapping me. We lived that way for about a year, her slapping me with her looks.

And after awhile, I didn’t want to be around my mother anymore. It made me sad. And it made me mad too.

One day a man knocked on the door. I was reading a book and I had the radio on. I never knew whether I should open the door or not. My mom never gave me too many rules. She did tell me I shouldn’t speak to strangers. But I spoke to strangers all the time and nothing bad ever happened. So I just decided to answer the door. A man stood there and he seemed nice. He was wearing a suit and he was wearing cologne and he seemed nice. “Is your mother here?” he asked. His English was perfect.

“No,” I said. “She’s not here.”

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“No,” I said.

“Your English is good,” he said.

“I speak Spanish too,” I said. “I like Spanish better than English.”

He laughed. He took out a big brown envelope. “Give this to your mother,” he said.

I nodded.

He reached into his pocket and gave me a ten dollar bill. “This is for you,” he said.

I nodded. And when my mother came home, I gave her the envelope and told her he’d given me ten dollars.

She looked at me and said, “Don’t ever answer the door if I’m not here.” She gave me a crooked smile. “I have to get dressed. Now, go on and play with Jorge.”

She always told me that. “Go on and play with Jorge.”

So that’s the way it was. I spent a lot of time at Jorge’s house. Not that I minded. And Jorge and his family, they didn’t mind either. His mother was nice and I ate dinner there almost every night and I would teach her a little English. And my life was okay. Eating at Jorge’s became normal and Jorge felt like a brother. He and Marcos didn’t get along, and that wasn’t so great, but they both liked me and somehow we managed to hang out together all the time. We were like a team. Since my bike had been stolen, they got together and stole another bike—and gave it to me. That made me really happy. You really have to like someone to steal a bike for them.

But when I’d come home, I was alone. I hated that. I would read books. And I would watch television. I liked the
telenovelas.
When I got tired of
telenovelas
, I would draw. I liked to draw. Sometimes I think books and
telenovelas
and drawing saved my life.

3.

It was a Thursday, I remember that. That evening, my mother came walking through the door. She was drunk. Really drunk. She kissed me and I could smell cigarettes and alcohol on her breath. She told me she was sorry, sorry for
everything and that everything was going to change. Everything was going to be better. I helped her get to bed. I gave her a glass of water. In the morning when I woke up, she was still sleeping. I got ready for school. I didn’t need her help with that. When I came home that Friday afternoon, my mother was making dinner. I remember that meal. She made
sopa de fideo
and
chiles rellenos.
It was the best meal I’d ever had. I studied her and I knew she was sad and there was nothing I could do to make her happy.

And then she said, “Let’s spend the night in El Paso.”

“Sounds great,” I said.

We crossed the bridge and my mother showed the border guys her passport and then we took a taxi to my aunt’s house.

I remember watching television with my cousins. I remember my mom telling me that she had to leave and that she would be back in the morning. I remember seeing a strange look on my aunt’s face.

I slept on a bed with my cousin Rafie. I was afraid my mother wasn’t coming back. But she
did
come back. She had a suitcase with her. The suitcase was full of all my clothes.

I looked at her and she said, “I’m going to take you to meet your father.”

I didn’t say anything. Maybe I did. I don’t remember. I was scared. That’s what I remember.

My aunt drove us to the place where my father lived, a small house that was close to downtown. When we stopped, my mother got out and knocked on the door. A man came out. He was thin and handsome and tall and had black hair. My aunt was watching me. “That’s your father,” she said. “You look like him.”

I nodded.

I noticed that my mother and the man who was my father were arguing. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. They were standing on the front porch
of the red brick house. Finally, I heard my mother yelling “You sonofabitch, you have to fucking take him!”

She put the suitcase on the steps of the porch and walked away.

She opened the door to the car and looked at me. “You’re going to live with your father.” She sounded angry.

I didn’t say anything. I wanted to ask her why all of this was happening. But I knew she wasn’t going to tell me. My mother never liked to talk about anything.

I got out of the car and looked at her.

She looked back at me. “Do you hate me?”

I didn’t know if I hated her or not. I just wanted to go back to Juárez. I wanted to go back to my life.

She asked me again. “Do you hate me?”

“Yes,” I said. “I hate you.” And then I just walked toward the man who was my father. I didn’t look back, didn’t wave, didn’t say goodbye. If she didn’t want me, then I didn’t want her either.

That was the last time I saw her.

I didn’t hate her.

4.

I remember my father staring at the suitcase sitting on the steps. “Your mother says you speak English.”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s good,” he said.

We kept studying each other. I was thin like him. I had his hazel eyes, his thick brown hair, his thin lips. I even had dimples like him. “Your mother didn’t tell me about you.”

“She didn’t tell me about you either.”

“Yeah, well, your mother doesn’t like to talk. I have that in common with her.” He didn’t seem all that happy to have me around. “I didn’t plan on this.” Then he mumbled something and I didn’t quite understand what he’d said. He spoke with a Texas accent even though he looked Mexican. I didn’t like it. He shook his head at me. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

“Mom said I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

That made him laugh. “So you’re a fucking comedian.”

I didn’t think it was funny.

He took me inside the house. It was neat and spare. He had a leather chair and a leather couch and a television. There was a rug on the wood floor. There wasn’t much to the kitchen. He had a stove and a refrigerator but he didn’t have pots, pans, spices, stuff like that. He had a coffeemaker. I guess he didn’t cook much. I didn’t know how to cook either so I guess I thought I was going to have to learn.

The bathroom was really dirty. There were a couple towels on the floor and the toilet had stains and the bathroom mirror was broken. “Your job is to keep this bathroom clean,” he said. “I’ll get you some cleaning stuff. I’ll fix that mirror. You do know how to clean, don’t you?”

I nodded.

He showed me a bedroom in the back. “This is your room,” he said. There was nothing in it. He looked at me. I guess I looked sad. “You can cry. But after the first week, no more crying. I don’t like people who cry about things.”

He had a big black pick-up truck that was sparkling clean. We drove to a huge home improvement store. I’d never been in a store that big. We bought paint. I got to pick the color. I picked white. I picked a lamp. I picked a rug
for my room. He bought cleaning supplies. “I want you to keep your room clean. And the kitchen, keep that clean too.”

And then we went to a furniture store. He bought me a one-person bed. He bought me a bookshelf and a desk. “You’re going to study,” he said. “You’re going to read books, you’re going to make straight A’s in school. If you don’t, you’ll be out on the goddamned streets.”