Tardy. I hated that word. I handed Mr. Barnes my note. He looked at it. Unexcused. Shook his head. Handed me my test. I sat down, looked at it, multiple choice, wasn’t worried, stuff not worth knowing. Dates. That was history? Dates. I was going to remember them after the test? Yeah, yeah. This wasn’t learning. I knew that. I did know that. Hated history, hated Barnes who could quote Robert E. Lee and every other general who ever took a breath. Hated Barnes, hated Romero, hated Colonel Wright. Hated Birdwail, though at least I didn’t have to spend any more time in his goddamned classroom. Hated my Civics teacher, Mrs. Jackson, who seemed to be only slightly better than Colonel Wright. Got up there and told us things like the S.D.S. was pinko. Pinko. Didn’t even know what that was. She’d make anybody want to be a pinko. Told us too many people were tearing down what we’d built up. Tearing everything down and paving the road for the Chinese or the Russians to come on in. Told us our fathers didn’t fight wars to hand the country over to hippies and other assorted peaceniks and cowards and other disrespectful vermin. Told us about the domino effect. And we just might be next to fall if we didn’t do our job in Viet Nam. That’s what she got up and told us. This was Civics—these are things we needed to know. And then she told us how the blacks were ungrateful. “After all we’ve done. For them.” I’m sure all of the citizens of Hollywood were supposed to be grateful, too. And she didn’t think much of César Chávez, either. Those people got jobs and no one else would hire them. Where exactly do they think they’re going to get a job? She took out pictures of D-Day, showed them to us. Your fathers fought hard for what we have. And what the hell did she know about why our fathers had fought? She didn’t know my father. She wouldn’t have been caught dead talking to him either. I knew that.
“My uncle died in Korea,” I said one day. I was mad. I was really mad. “He was a patriot,” she said. “Brave.” Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. What the hell did she know? He was dead. And I still didn’t understand why he had to die. And my father, the veteran, was heartbroken. I hated this stupid, worthless, good-for-nothing school. Right then, right there, all I felt was rage. Five more months. It didn’t matter one damn to me what life would be after this. I wanted out. Out! That’s what I wanted.
I turned in my test. Barnes smiled. I was the last to start. The first to finish.
Tomorrow, I would get it back. It would say: “A. Nice work, Sammy.” That’s what my papers always said.
I hated myself. Sometimes, I did. Because I took the crap they gave me and pretended like it was real food. I took it. I ate it. And I knew what it was—it was all crap. Anything I knew about America, I learned from my father. And from living in Hollywood. And from watching the news. And from reading books. I hated myself because they owned me. Because I let them own me. I knew that. I did know that. And I wasn’t gonna do a damn thing about it.
Hey! Hey, you! Where’s your belt?
On the fifth day of detention, a Monday, it started to snow. I sat in the back of the classroom—next to René. He’d forgotten to tuck his shirt back in after he’d gone to the bathroom. Lots of guys got caught that way. Colonel Wright had caught up with him in the hall. Colonel Wright, he could spot a guy with an untucked shirt fifty yards away.
I looked over to see what René was doing. Writing a letter to Pifas—he was in Nam now. No Germany for him. I looked out the window and watched the snow fall. It was beautiful, really beautiful. I thought I’d like walking home in it. That’s what I was thinking.
Colonel Wright was today’s monitor. “No looking out the window,” he said. Everyone looked up.
“It’s snowing,” I said.
“You’ve never seen snow before, Santos?”
“Not lately,” I said.
“I don’t like you, Santos.”
“Yes, sir. I can’t say that I blame you, sir.”
Made him mad. He was about to say something else when Gigi walks in. Gigi was always saving my ass. He looked at her. “Well, if it isn’t Miss Free Speech.” He looked at all of us. “We have a celebrity among us. You want to give that speech for us one more time? We sure enjoyed it.”
God, Gigi could give a look. She hated him. More than me, I think.
“And she’s late. Late to detention. What do you think about that? And she wanted to be President of the Senior Class. Do you think we should ask her if she has an excuse?”
“It was personal,” she said.
He just stared at her. They stayed that way for a while. Then she opened her purse and showed him her feminine hygiene products. Then found a seat.
“I didn’t say you could sit down, young lady.”
“I’m not in the Army, sir.”
“What?”
“Tomorrow there’s a mass for the deaf.”
We all laughed. Couldn’t help it. An old Mexican saying: Mañana hay misa pa’ los sordos. I’d never heard it translated into English. Maybe that’s why we all laughed, because it was odd to hear it in English. Gigi, she was a helluva translator.
God, the Colonel hated that we were laughing.
“Everybody. Everybody gets an extra day.” He looked at Gigi. “You want to do your classmates any more favors?”
Gigi shook her head. Her eyes were on fire. I knew those eyes.
René and Gigi and I had a snowball fight after detention. It was dark, but the cold of the snow was soft and good. And for a moment, the world we lived in was perfect. Just for a second. And then afterwards, we drank hot chocolate at Shirley’s. “I hate this bullshit detention,” René said. “And I hate that Colonel. I hate that pinche.”
“He fought for your freedom,” Gigi smiled. “Just ask him. He’ll tell you.” We laughed. We were laughing at him. The only way we knew to fight back.
“We should do something,” Gigi said.
“Something,” I said. “An undetermined or unspecified thing.”
“Librarian,” Gigi said.
“I was just wanting to know what you meant by something.”
“A student strike.”
“Forget about it.”
René was all for it. A fight! Hey! A fight! Any kind of fight. His eyes. Sometimes they were like Gigi’s. On fire.
“I’m not gonna organize a pinche student strike,” I said.
“They’re doing it everywhere.”
“In colleges. We’re not in college.”
“Today is the first day of the rest of your fucking life.” René grinned.
“Not gonna do it. I’m not.”
“Oh, you’re such a pinche good boy, ¿sabes, Sammy?”
“Culo,” I said.
“You’re the culo,” Gigi said.
“I don’t know the first thing about organizing a student strike. I’m out. I’m all the way out.”
“What are you afraid of? Chicken, big gallina.”
“I’m going to college,” I said. “You and René can go to hell. In five months, I’m getting the hell out of Cruces High. And then, I’m going to college. And then my life is going to start. And I’m not gonna screw that up just because we’re all pissed off. You think you’re the only ones pissed off at how things are run at that two bit 7-11 pop stand they call Cruces High? Why don’t you get all those gringos to help you out? See if they’ll organize a student strike. Let’s see how many of them are going to put their asses on the line.”
Gigi didn’t say anything. She wasn’t happy. She’d talked me into a hundred things since I’d known her—ever since second grade when she made me give my last nickel to some little guy she’d owed. Always got her way. Nope. Not this time.
“We can’t do it without you, Sammy,” she said.
“Forget it, Gigi. NO LO VOY A HACER, RAMONA.” She hated it when I called her by her real name.
“Okay,” she said. “And if you ever call me Ramona again, I’m gonna slap your lips clean off your face, ¿sabes?” She smiled. “Okay then, you won’t do it. Okay.” When I said okay, it meant okay. When she said okay, it meant she was gonna come back at
you when you had your guard down.
“You’re a real bendido,” René said. “The real thing.”
“Yup,” I said. I wasn’t budging. I’d been their pinche yo-yo one too many times. Not this time. If they wanted to start a revolution, they could start it without me.
René and Gigi didn’t talk to me for a week. Didn’t care. I finished detention. Every day, before school, I made sure I was wearing my belt. My hair was getting long. I cut it. I thought of Pifas, his military hair cut, the picture he’d sent to Gigi. All American. From Hollywood.
Chapter Eighteen
Two days later, I came home from school. Last day of detention. I picked Elena up at Mrs. Apodaca’s. Dad was at a Knights of Columbus meeting. The Knights of Columbus. What was that? Catholic men getting together without their wives. Why did Dad go? He didn’t have a wife, not anymore, joined them after Mom died. Maybe it was us.
When we walked in the door, Elena looks up at me. “Sammy?”
“Yeah?” She had this look on her face. That look nine-and-half-year-olds get when they’re about to ask you a question you don’t want to answer.
“What’s heroin?”
“Little girls don’t need to know about heroin.” She didn’t like my answer. Nine-and-a-half-year-olds don’t like a lot of answers. “You wanna help with dinner?”
She nodded. We washed our hands. The rule. Mom was gone, but we still lived with her rules. Every time I washed my hands, I thought of Mom. The way she kissed me after I washed them. The way she looked at me. “What are you gonna make, Sammy?”
“How about meatloaf?” Meatloaf was easy. We had hamburger meat. It took a while in the oven, but it was easy. Not very Mexican, but easy.
“And french fries?”
“Okay,” I said, “meatloaf and french fries. You peel the potatoes.”
She nodded. She stood over the sink and peeled. She watched me as I crumbled Saltines into the hamburger meat. “I want to know what heroin is,” she said.
This was a father talk. I was the brother. Not the father. I always said that to myself when I knew Elena had me against the ropes. “It’s a drug,” I said. “And it’s bad.”
“What does it do? Why is it bad?”
Not that I knew what it did. “It makes you feel good, I guess. But only for a little while. And then it makes you crazy.” I made a face. “Loopy, nutso, crazy, crazy.”
She laughed. I could always make her laugh. “What’s addicted?”
“Why are you asking me all these questions, Elena?” She could peel potatoes and talk at the same time. She was good, my little sister. I kissed her. Maybe if I kissed her, she’d stop asking questions. Didn’t work. Never worked. Kisses didn’t work on girls. Not really. No.
“Mrs. Apodaca told Mrs. Garcia that she’d seen Reyes and that he was addicted to heroin, and that he looked like death.”
“Oh,” I said.
“What does death look like, Sammy?”
“Like Halloween,” I said.
“You don’t want to talk about it, do you?”
God, that kid could read me. “I don’t think you should worry about heroin,” I said.
“Dad will tell me,” she said. Like, who cares about you, Sammy?
“Maybe he will,” I said.
“You forgot the onions,” she said, as I kneaded the glop of hamburger meat.
But she got me started thinking about Reyes. He’d dropped out of school. Not that I blamed him. But for heroin? It was true about him. I’d seen him around. God, he was skinny. And his breath smelled like hell. I’d given him two dollars. “Go buy a toothbrush.” That’s what I told him. I could be mean.
And that night, right when my father was eating my meatloaf and watching the evening news, Mrs. Espinoza came to the door. “Have you seen Reyes? Have you seen my Reyes?” And then she breaks down, “No se que voy hacer. Me estoy volviendo loca. No ha llegado a la casa por cinco días.” Five days without seeing her son. Crazy, crazy. I imagined La Llorona looked like that. Red eyes from crying, from not sleeping. A face that was old, not because of time, but because worry did that, aged you, made you look like you’d never been young. God, she looked awful. And she was shaking and crying. For her son—like La Llorona.
My father made her sit down, made tea for her. She cried, and she kept asking me if I’d seen her Reyes. She kept rubbing her hands on her thin cotton dress, rubbing and rubbing her hands until I thought she’d sand all the skin off her hands. I thought maybe she needed something to calm her down. I kept shaking my head, until she asked me one more time, and then I couldn’t take it anymore, seeing her like that. And I said, “René and I—we’ll find him.” Where the hell was I gonna find him? It was almost eleven o’clock. Where in the hell were we going to look? Where? My dad nodded. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Ahorita salen a buscarlo. Va a ver, señora, ahorita se lo tráen.” Yeah, we would find him. Ahorita. We would find him. My father picked up the phone, called René, talked to him, talked to Mr. Montoya. He hung up the phone. He nodded at me. I put on my coat. I waited for René, so we could go out into the night and find Reyes. René, he might know. He knew things, got around. Maybe he might know. Before I left the house, I looked at Mrs. Espinoza. “We’ll find him for you.” I didn’t think so.
“So where the hell are we gonna look?” I looked at René. I was mad. I didn’t know what we were doing. I got mad if I didn’t know what to do.
“I know this guy,” René said. “His name’s Mark. He’s a dealer.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to know how René knew. I nodded.
We went there, an apartment near the university. René got out of the car, talked to him, talked to him for a long time. He knew this guy, I could tell, the way they talked in the light of the doorway. I waited in the car. Smoked.
When René came back to the car, he lit up a cigarette.
“You’ve been here before,” I said.
“¿Y qué? ¿Qué cabrónes te importa?”
“You do that crap?”
“Sometimes I sell that crap—if you want to know the pinche truth.” He looked at me. He could see what I was holding in my eyes. “Mr. Santito, Mr. Clean,” he said. “Librarian. Not everybody’s as holy as you. Not everybody has his head up his ass.”
I hated the way he said that, hated the way he looked at me. I didn’t say anything, nothing. “Let’s just find him,” I said. “Let’s just find Reyes.”
He started the car. “If you ever tell anyone we were here, Sammy, I swear I’ll kick the crap out of you. ¿Sabes, cabrón? ¿Entiendes Méndez?”
He sold that crap. How come I didn’t know? How come I didn’t? Because. Because I didn’t want to. I didn’t say anything. “Let’s just find Reyes,” I whispered. “Then we can just go home.”
We drove to some trailer house in Mesilla Park. René knew where he was going. He parked, got out of the car, knocked at the door to the trailer house. Some girl comes out. Straight long hair. A gringa. René went in. A little while later, he comes out. He gets back in the car.
“Didn’t know you had so many friends.”
“Screw you. You want to find Reyes or not?”
I lit a cigarette. He drove to another apartment on Locust, cheap cinderblock apartments. Four of them in a row. René stopped the car on the street. “You wanna go in?”
“That where he is?”
René nodded.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll go in.” I got out of the car. We walked up to the door. “You been here before?”
René shook his head, knocked, nobody answered. He knocked again. “Open up!” he said. “It’s René.” No one answered. He pounded on the door, looked at me, then pounded on the door again. “It’s me, René. Open the damned door!” I could see his face, the corner streetlight shining on us. He looked older than me. It was like I’d never seen him before, like I was seeing him for the first time. And I didn’t like what I saw. Finally, someone comes to the door, opens it. We stared into the face of s
ome guy, long stringy, dirty hair, stoned out of his mind. A gringo. He could hardly talk. And he says, “René. Far-fucking-out! René.” Screwed up, all screwed up. I could see that. René pushed him out of the way, and went into the house. I stood there, staring at this guy’s eyes. He stared back at me. They almost didn’t have a color, his eyes. Like he’d washed all the color out of them. He just stared at me—like he didn’t understand. Like his brain was missing. Like he wasn’t even alive.
René came back to the door. He just looked at me. “Sammy,” he said. Then he stopped. “Sammy,” he said. He looked sick. God. He looked sick.
“What?”
“Sammy!”
“What?”
“Reyes.”
“What?”
“Reyes—” I knew. By the look on René’s face. I guess I just had to see for myself. I had to see. I walked into the back bedroom, looked in, Reyes, he was there, just lying on the floor. I didn’t feel anything. I looked at him like I was looking at a thing I’d never seen before, like I was looking at something foreign, not a foreign person, but a foreign thing. And I was trying to figure out what it was. The light in the room was bad, bad, but I could see everything. A bed with no sheets. A needle on the bed. Reyes on the floor. It was as if my eyes had become a camera. I was taking pictures. That’s all I was, a camera. Cameras don’t feel.
I don’t know how long I stared down at Reyes. I just knew I’d be coming back to this room for a long time. I closed my eyes. I opened them. I walked out of the room.
René was leaning against the open door. I walked up to him. He had his back to me. “We have to call the cops,” I said.
René didn’t say anything. Not a damn thing.
“We have to call the cops, René! We have to call the cops!”
I remember looking for a phone. There wasn’t one. No damn phone. Nothing in that house except for a couch in the living room. Nothing. René just looked at me. It was like he was asleep. “Stay here,” I said. I took his keys. I drove to the Pic Quick around the corner. There was a phone booth there. When I pulled up, I saw a cop car. A policeman was inside—buying coffee. I stared at his car. My heart was pounding. Pounding and pounding. And the wings I had inside me were at it again— beating like hell, stronger than they had ever beat, and the wings were a whole damned bird now—a whole damned bird and he was beating his wings with an anger that was fighting me to let him out, beating the hell out of all my insides. And I knew that the bird was a pigeon—the worst, most common, meanest kind of bird. A pigeon. And I knew that every time something bad happened, that damned pigeon would wake up and begin beating against my insides, and I would never know any peace.