Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club (9 page)

I nodded.

Then we went to another store and he bought me some blankets for my bed and some curtain rods and some curtains. We painted the room that afternoon. Mostly, he painted it. I watched, but I did the corners with a brush just like he told me to. We didn’t talk. He didn’t ask me questions. I didn’t ask him questions either. He listened to country music. I had never listened to the radio in English and I thought that the songs were sad.

I slept on the couch that night.

I was sad and I was confused. It took me a long time to fall asleep. I listened to all the sounds on the street, an ambulance, the train, cars coming and going. I thought, at first, that my life in El Paso was going to be just like my life in Juárez—only the language would be different. I tried not to think about bad things. I tried not to think about my mother. But I did think about her and I thought about Marcos and Jorge and then I started to cry and I cried for a long time. And then I stopped.

And really, my father didn’t seem to be such a bad guy. He wasn’t nice like Jorge’s father, but he was getting stuff for me and making sure I had my own room and I knew he was going to give me rules that I had to follow, and if I followed them, then he’d take care of me.

When I woke up in the morning, we moved the furniture in. He hung up my curtains. He told me to sweep and mop the floor.

I nodded.

“So do it then,” he said. “Then make your bed.”

He looked around the room and nodded. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said.

I walked around the house. There was a nice big room with lots of windows that faced the backyard. It had a brick floor and I liked the room a lot but it didn’t have anything in it. It was empty and that’s how I felt—empty. I walked into the backyard. It was just dirt and weeds and a nice big tree.

I walked to the living room and thought about watching television but I didn’t feel like it, so I walked out to the front porch and sat on the front steps. There was a newspaper in the front yard and I sat on the steps and started to read it.

I could hear the bells of the cathedral and then I heard my father’s voice. “You’re going to church. I’ll let you skip this Sunday. But starting next Sunday, you’re going to church every week. Have you made your communion?”

“No,” I said.

“How old are you?”

“Ten.”

“You should have made your communion,” he said.

“Mom didn’t go to church,” I said.

“I don’t go to church either,” he said. “But that’s no excuse.” He shook his head. Then he looked at me, like he was studying me. “What’s your name?”

“Maximiliano.”

“They call you Max?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Gonzalez.”

“That’s your mother’s name. We’ll have to fix that. Your last name’s McDonald.”

“McDonald? You’re not Mexican?”

“Yeah, I’m Mexican. Look, not every Mexican has a Mexican name.” He laughed. “Maximiliano McDonald.” He laughed again. “It’s got a ring to it. Where were you born?”

I shrugged. “Here. El Paso. But I don’t know where.”

“Guess I’ll have to do some paperwork. Have that name changed. Legally, I mean.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll be gone for the day. I have some business.” He took out a twenty dollar bill. “Get yourself some food. If you walk down that way,” he pointed directly ahead of us, “and you walk up Mesa Street, you’ll find places.” He put a key in my hand. “Don’t lose it or I’ll kick your ass.” He started walking toward his pickup truck in the driveway. He turned back, “And don’t ever walk into my room. Not ever.”

When my father left, I cleaned the bathroom. That took a while. Then I took a shower. I looked through my clothes, hung them up in my closet. They were a little wrinkled. I looked everywhere but I couldn’t find an iron. I’d been ironing my own clothes since I started school. Besides teaching me to read and write in English, it was the only other thing my mother had taught me how to do.

My mother had put a picture of herself in my suitcase. She was smiling and she looked like she was happy. But photographs lied. They always lied. I put the picture in my desk drawer.

I put on a T-shirt and I decided to take a walk. I walked all day in every direction. I had nowhere to go and I didn’t have my aunt’s phone number and didn’t know how to get there on my own. I thought of walking over to Juárez but I was afraid of getting lost.

I bought a yellow pad and some pens and a drawing pad and some pencils and a pencil sharpener. I wasn’t hungry and I didn’t eat anything. I got home before dark and sat at my desk and wrote down all my father’s rules.

1. Make straight A’s at school.

2. Clean bathroom and kitchen once a week.

3. Go to church on Sundays and make my first communion.

4. Never go into his room.

5. Don’t lose the key to the house.

I knew there would be more rules. And I was ready to write them down. So that was the way it was going to be with me and him, this man who was my father. He was the rule maker. I was the rule follower.

And then I sketched my room and put the sketch pad under my bed. It wasn’t a very good drawing. But I didn’t care.

And then, before I put my yellow writing pad away, I wrote down my new name: Maximiliano McDonald. I liked Gonzalez better.

5.

My father sent me to St. Patrick’s. I could walk there from where we lived. I knew the school wasn’t free. My father, who I called Eddie behind his back, said when the time came to go to high school, he was going to send me to Cathedral. I asked him what kind of school that was. “It’s a Catholic boys’ school.”

I nodded. I did a lot of nodding around my father.

I got used to living in El Paso. I had friends. I liked school. I made A’s. There was nothing special about my life. And special wasn’t something I expected. I learned how to cook, sort of. I could fry eggs and I learned
to make omelets because my father liked them. I knew how to make hamburgers. We ate a lot of sandwiches. We ate a lot of pizza and take-out food. My father and I would watch television together sometimes. But he went out at night a lot. I think I was numb, that’s what I think. I’ve been numb most of my life. That’s how I’ve survived.

When school ended that year, I hung out at the house a lot. I checked out books from the library and read and read and read.

Like my mother, my father didn’t work. He spent a lot of time on the phone and a lot of time in his room and he would take off in his truck. Sometimes he didn’t come home at night. I asked him about that.

“Are you my mother?” he said. But then he said, “Do you get afraid when you’re alone at night?”

“No. Mom used to leave me alone all the time.”

“What kind of a mother does that?”

I shrugged. “Look, alone doesn’t scare me. It’s just that I worry.”

“Worry?”

“What if you don’t come home? What will I do?”

He didn’t say anything for a while, and then he said. “I like women. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“So don’t worry.”

“Okay,” I said. “I won’t worry.” And then I asked him, “Why don’t you work?”

“I do work,” he said. “I’m a businessman.”

“What kind of businessman?” I asked.

“You’ll find out on your own,” he said. “And I don’t like you hanging around the house so much.”

I shrugged.
Where was I supposed to go
?

“Listen, Max, you know how to swim?”

“No,” I said.

“Learn,” he said.

Another rule.

“When’s your birthday?” he asked.

“Next week. June seventh.”

“I’ll get you a bike.” That made me happy. He didn’t throw me a birthday party, but then my mother had never thrown me a party either. And anyway, I didn’t like parties. But I liked the bike. I would ride around with Pete, a friend from school. I asked Pete if he knew how to swim and he said yes. So he taught me how to swim. It was a good summer: swimming, reading and riding my bike. It wasn’t such a bad life.

One afternoon when I got home, there was a man in our living room. “Hi,” I said.

He nodded at me.

I looked at him and asked, “Where’s my dad?”

“He’s getting something for me,” he said.

I turned on the television.

My father came into the room with a package wrapped in brown paper. He handed the man the package and the man handed my father a wad of money. They went outside and talked, then the man left.

When my father came back inside, he looked at me and said, “Never talk about what I do.”

I nodded.

He handed me two twenties and a ten. “I’m giving you fifty dollars a month for your allowance.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“If you’re smart, you won’t spend it all and you’ll put some away.”

“Okay,” I nodded. I wondered if saving money was a rule. It didn’t sound like a rule. It was more like a suggestion.
Never talk about what I do
. That was a rule. So I started separating suggestions from rules.

After a while, I figured it out. My father was a drug dealer. I don’t think I cared, not really. And what was I supposed to do about it anyway? Some of his customers seemed really normal. Some guys came by in business suits. Some guys looked liked normal college kids. Others, not so normal. I really liked to study the guys who came to do business with my father if they had tattoos. One guy had a tattoo of a mermaid on his shaved head. I had a thing for tattoos.

One morning, I asked my father, “Can I get a tattoo?”

We were eating breakfast. I’d made him a cheese and jalapeño omelet. “No fuckin’ way,” he said.

“Not even if I pay for it with my allowance and the money I save?”

“I said no fuckin’ way.”

“So that’s another rule,” I said.

“You’re goddamned right,” he said.

I guess I must have looked sad or disappointed because he said, “Look, you’re a good kid, and you’re gonna stay a good kid.”

“Dad, what if I’m not really good?”

He smiled. “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me
Dad
.”

“You want me to call you Eddie?”

“No, Dad works.”

I nodded. “Look, Dad, maybe I’m not a good kid. It’s not like you know me.”

“You’re soft,” he said.

“I’m not.” I hated him for saying that.

He could tell I was mad. He put his hand on my shoulder. He hardly ever touched me. “I know a few things. I know what I see.”

I did hate him. I did.

6.

Sometimes I would take out the picture of my mother and stare at it. I took out my pencil and tried to draw her. I couldn’t remember her first name. But I didn’t want to forget her face.

7.

One day my father came into the room and handed me my birth certificate. I stared at it. I saw the name on the birth certificate: Maximiliano Gonzalez McDonald.

I looked at my father. “Thought I was gonna have to change your name. Turns out you had my name all along.”

I nodded.

“Why’d she name you Maximiliano?”

“She thought the story of Emperor Maximiliano and the Empress Carlota was romantic.”

My father laughed—then shook his head. He looked a little sad. “Carlota was mad. Fucking crazy. Just like your mother.”

8.

I made my first communion when I was eleven. I was about four years older than the other kids. Not that I cared all that much. From the very beginning, I knew that I would never be a very good Catholic. I wasn’t interested in God
and I didn’t think he was interested in me either. We sort of just ignored each other. I was going to do the Catholic thing because it was one of my father’s rules. I guess he figured that the church thing would make me a better person. But this was what I didn’t really get: if my dad thought that going to church made you a better person, then why didn’t he go to mass? Maybe he didn’t want to be a better person? But if he didn’t want to be a better person, then why would he want me to be a better person? Maybe I thought too much about things.

On the Saturday before my first communion, my father bought me a new pair of black pants, a new pair of shoes, a new white shirt, my first tie and my first sports coat. He took me to mass that Sunday. It was strange. I was used to going by myself. He was all dressed up, wore a suit and shaved. He looked really handsome. Before he left the house, he handed me a rosary. It was old and worn. He just handed it to me and said, “It belonged to my father.”

I took it and looked at him. He looked sad. “He came over from Ireland when he was a young man. He settled in Guanajuato. Married a woman named Rosario. I was born in San Antonio. And that about sums up what I have to say about my family history.”

I wanted to ask him if he’d loved his father, but I thought he’d hate me for asking the question. I smiled at him, “This is better than an allowance.” I put it my pocket.