We Were Here (38 page)

He nodded.

“Thanks, though,” I said.

All of a sudden she started sobbing and she rushed up and hugged me mad tight. Laid her old grandma head on my shoulder. And I’m not gonna lie, man, I went stiff as a board in her arms. And it wasn’t nothing to do with
her
. I love the hell out of my grandma. I just knew her hug was trying to tell me I was still her grandson, even after everything I did, and it made me sick about myself. ’cause we both knew I didn’t deserve it.

She squeezed and sniffled and tried to get her breathing regular. After a couple minutes like that she said: “I’m so sorry,
mijo.”

“I know, Grandma,” I said, but I only said it ’cause I didn’t know what else to say.

She pulled her head back and looked in my eyes. “I’m just so sorry for you.”

I pulled out of her arms.

She took my face in her strong hands and made it so I had to look her in the eyes. “I’m so sorry for you, Miguel. I pray about you every night. I know you didn’t mean it.”

I nodded, looked down at the dirt floor.

“I pray about you,
mijo
”

She hugged me again and then kissed me on the cheek and said: “I’m so glad you came. Your grandfather is too.”

I stayed staring at the ground.

My grandma turned to Rondell and said: “You too, honey. I’m happy you’re here. Look out for my grandson, okay?”

“I already been doin’ it, ma’am,” Rondell said. “You ain’t even gotta worry. That’s my word. It’s how come I didn’t go fishin’ in Mexico.”

“I know you’ll watch him for me, honey,” my grandma said, and then she turned back to me.

She stared for a while longer, wiping a few more tears, and then she left the shed.

Soon as she was gone Rondell said: “What’s she talkin’ about, Mexico?”

I wanted to answer the guy. Wanted to tell him everything. I was so tired of keeping shit to myself.

But I just couldn’t.

All I could do was shake my head.

I kneeled down, pulled my journal out of my bag and opened it up. Pulled out my pen and started writing.

Rondell looked down at me for a few minutes, but he didn’t ask me again. Eventually he reached into his bag too. Pulled out his Bible.

And that’s how we both are now.

I’m writing all this down in my book, and he’s looking at his Bible.

September 10

We worked on the tree all day again today. And for the first couple hours I was struggling just as bad as yesterday. Maybe even worse. While I shoveled I tried to think what everybody else working had that I didn’t have. Why their backs didn’t seem to be aching as much. And why their hands didn’t seem as blistered and rubbed raw. And why their faces weren’t all frowned up like mine.

But then after lunch something weird happened.

I decided to try as hard as I possibly could and locked into this unexplainable work rhythm. I’d stab my shovel in, pull up on the dirt, and toss my shovelful over my shoulder. Then I’d stab my shovel back in, pull up on the dirt and toss my shovelful over my shoulder again. Kept doing it that same way, over and over and over, to the point that I wasn’t even aware of time passing.

I matched my breathing with my shovel stabs. And it was strange, man. I actually stopped thinking about the pain in my back and shoulders and hands. After a while of doing it like this, I looked up and saw myself as part of the whole work site. Everybody’s head down, working and breathing and thinking their thoughts and helping the people around ’em. Looking everywhere, I could actually see us changing the yard. Little by little. With every shovelful and pick swing.

And me too. I was part of it. We were all our own people but we were one. Even though we weren’t talking to each other.

For some reason it made me think about that drum circle we did at Venice beach. Everybody pounding their bongos at the same pace, the sounds we were all making together, how it was so hypnotizing and spiritual. The sun going down over
the ocean. It was just like that only in a different way. ’cause in Venice everybody went there to be a part of something. But here, we were just working. We were just doing our job, making money to survive.

In that way it was almost better. You had to actually look up to realize you were part of something bigger than just the hole you were digging.

I don’t know why, man, but I got so hyped I started working harder than I’d ever worked in my entire life. At anything, including playing ball with Diego at the park or even writing this book. I kept digging and digging alongside Rondell. And when the boss whistled and said it was quitting time I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like we’d just barely had our lunch.

We carried all the tools back to the truck and it felt like I was supposed to be there. All the Mexican guys were joking around with each other in Spanish and a couple of them even joked with me and Rondell. Who cares if I couldn’t understand. I laughed my ass off anyway.

Me and Rondell hopped in the back of the truck and my gramps handed me an empty bucket and nodded at me, and I nodded back.

As we drove home my entire body felt tired as hell, but it was a good tired. Like I was gonna deserve to eat the food the girl brought us later. And I was gonna deserve my sleep on the hay.

I punched big Rondell in the shoulder and we both laughed and I showed him how I could make centipede movements in the wind with my hand.

Rondell looked at me and nodded his big head up and down and up and down. And then he did it too. On his side of the truck. We kept doing that stupid shit the whole drive
home. And after we got out, put all the tools away, my gramps’s friend came and gave us more money. And the little girl brought us a big plate of tamales. And I felt mad happy. The happiest since we went in Mong’s ocean.

As we ate I thought how even though we still didn’t get that damn tree out, for the first time since me and Rondell had been working on it we got it to budge. And we were both sweaty and dirty and tired as hell from a hard day of work. And I felt proud.

Like I earned something.

Like I had heart.

September 11

Today work went the same exact way. I struggled in the morning, and then after lunch I locked into the same strange rhythm. By the end of the day me and Rondell got it so the tree was almost ready to go. We could move it back and forth with our hands and lean it way to the side when we jimmied it from underneath with a pick. But we still couldn’t get it all the way out.

A couple other guys came over and yanked on it too, jimmied with their picks, but nobody could totally pull it out.

“Is a stubborn one,” my gramps’s friend said as we were loading up the truck. “Roots are deep, huh?”

Me and Rondell both nodded.

“Sometimes roots are like that. Very deep. Much deeper than people can see.”

We nodded some more.

“Like life,” he said.

“I know,” I told him back, even though I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant.

He patted me and Rondell each on the shoulder, and then he got in the cab of the truck with my gramps and they drove us back.

We got paid and ate a big plate of chicken tacos and then my grandma came back over and sat with us at the little table in our shed for a while. We went through the same things as we did the night before, about how she was happy we’d come and could she fix us any leftover tamales or empanadas. But then all of a sudden she had mad tears running down her face.

“Your brother,” she said, grabbing my hand. “He was such a good boy.”

I looked back at her, my stomach flipping over inside my body, my head getting woozy like I was drunk even though I didn’t have a sip of alcohol in forever. And I couldn’t stop swallowing. I don’t even know why, but I kept swallowing like every two seconds.

She wiped her face, and I stood up and went to my bag again.

I could feel my grandma and Rondell following me with their eyes.

“Such a good boy,” my grandma said again.

“Who is?” Rondell said.

“Miguel’s brother,” my grandma said. “His name was Diego.”

“What happened to him?” Rondell said.

My grandma didn’t say anything, just cried even harder and touched Rondell on the arm. Then she put her face in her hands and said through her fingers: “But it’s gonna be okay,
mijo
. I pray about you.”

She said it again before I spun around, shaking my head. “It’s not okay,” I told her.

She looked up at me with a surprised look on her face. “It
is, mijo
. It was an accident. I know because I prayed about it.”

“It’s not okay,” I said again. And I kept shaking my head back and forth and back and forth. “It’s not okay, Grandma.”

“Your brother would want you to go on living your life. He loved you more than anyone.”

Just hearing her say that made a small tear push out of my right eye. I wiped it real quick, told her: “I loved him too.”

“We all did,
mijo
.”

I stared back at my grandma, wiping my face.

Rondell kept his eyes on me, his mouth hung open.

Then my grandma broke down even more, started sobbing. She ran her hands down her face and said in this crazy crying grandma voice: “I’m just so sorry for you, Miguel.”

I stared at the ground.

She stood up. “It’s too much,” she said. “For a boy to take. I pray every night for you to be okay. But I don’t know.”

She backed up toward the shed door, crying, and then she sort of waved at us and said: “I’ll come talk to you tomorrow. I can’t right now.”

She left.

It was just me and Rondell now. And he was staring at me. And I already knew his question so I told him: “What, Rondell? You wanna know what happened to my brother, right?”

“What was your grandma tellin’ us, Mexico?” he said.

I tried to smile at him, but some tears came trickling out of my burning eyes. I just let ’em too, and nodded my head for a while.

I looked Rondell right in his eyes and said: “You wanna know what happened, Rondell?”

He nodded at me.

“I killed him, man. Killed my own brother.”

He stared back at me like he didn’t understand.

“That’s what you wanted to hear about, right?”

“Your brother you told me about?”

“Yeah, man. I killed him.” I said it at him again and again, and Rondell just sat there, looking back at me, stunned. His eyes bugged and his mouth hanging open.

“But I thought you and him was gonna meet up—”

“I lied, Rondell!” I shouted. “I been lying to you this whole time. I can’t never see my brother again for the rest of my life ’cause I killed him!”

I realized I was crying now for real. Tears streaming down my cheeks and in my mouth and I didn’t even try to stop ’em. Everything was coming out of me at once, climbing up through my throat and into my mouth and shooting out from behind my eyes. Somehow it was a relief to just say it, over and over. “I killed my own brother, Rondell. My own brother. Dead, man. ’cause of me.”

It was the first time I’d ever said it out loud.

“My brother’s dead,” I told him again, “’cause I killed him.”

Rondell sat there quiet for a few minutes, just looking at me. Bugging. Then he cleared his throat and raised his head up and asked me how, and I stared right back at him, crying and smiling at the same time.

He didn’t look away. Asked me again even.

I wiped my eyes and nose on my sweatshirt and thought about that for a while. What he wanted to know.

Then I decided to say it to him.

The Truth:

I’m back in Stockton, at our apartment after school.

Six months and fourteen days ago.

I’m sitting in the living room eating a piece of Moms’s homemade bread with butter and sugar when Diego comes
strutting through the front door. The TV’s on to some show I used to like. Diego tosses his backpack on the couch, points at me and goes in the kitchen to make his own pieces of bread.

I watch him go through the door.

He comes out a minute later with three pieces on a paper towel and sits in Pop’s old chair. “Yo, Guelly,” he says, picking up his first bread. “Lemme get the remote.”

“Nah, man, I’m tryin’ to watch this,” I tell him.

He pauses his bread before it gets to his mouth. “Guelly,” he says.

I look up at him, almost smiling but not yet. “What, man?”

“Lemme get the remote.”

“Can’t do it,” I say.

He nods and sets down his bread, stands up. “Guelly,” he says.

“What?”

“I gotta
make
you give it up?”

I start laughing and toss the remote at him. It bangs off his chest and falls to the floor. When it hits one of the batteries flies out and we both watch it roll under the couch.

Diego looks up at me, laughing a little too, now.

And the reason we’re laughing is ’cause we
always
mess around like this after school. It’s like our ritual.

It’s how we have fun sometimes.

He charges, jumps on me, gets me in a tight headlock. My sugar bread goes flying on the rug, butter side down. And Diego shouts through his laughter: “You gonna disrespect your big bro like that? Huh, Guelly? That’s what’s up?”

“Come on, D,” I say. “Lemme go, man.”

“Say mercy, bitch!”

I laugh without sound, shout: “Hell nah!”

I reach up, trying to pry his hands away from my head one finger at a time.

“Say mercy!”

“Hell nah!”

“Say mercy!”

“Hell nah!”

I use all my strength and for the first time ever I actually pry his hands off me and get myself free.

I stand up and look at him.

He looks back at me.

I feel stronger all of a sudden, almost as strong as Diego. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt as strong as Diego in my whole life.

We both look at each other, smiling.

I feel incredible.

“Oh, I see what’s up, Guelly,” he says. “You think you some kind of badass now.”

“Better watch it, D,” I tell him. “One day I’m gonna mess around and
make you
say mercy.”

We both crack up a little and he says: “Too bad one day ain’t today, little bro.”