Sam took a seat next to him on the bench. “Right.”
“Look, my mom threw me out of the house.” And then he explained the whole thing, how his mom was high when he got home late and how she started in on him and how she’d found his checkbook in one of his drawers and demanded that he give her all his money as rent. “‘You wanna live here, you little shit? Start paying!’ She had this demonic look on her face, and then she just starts hitting me and saying all sorts of shit and calling me a faggot, and I won’t get into the descriptive parts that went along with faggot, and so I just packed my things and got the hell out. And as I’m walking out the door, she’s in my face and telling me never to come back again and all kinds of shit like that, and well, here I am.”
“How come you didn’t come to my house?” I asked.
“Really, Sal? I was gonna do that? No, man, I got my pride.” He kept talking and saying that he’d find a way to get by, and that nothing was gonna stop him from going to college, and it made me feel like an idiot because college was this gift I had, like a present under a Christmas tree, and I didn’t want to open it.
Sam and I sat there listening to him. As he was talking, Sam and I were thinking. Thinking and listening. And when he was done, he shrugged and said, “Well, there it all is. That’s how my life rolls.”
So I said, “What are you gonna do, Fito?”
“Well, I’ve been saving my money to go to college. And I’ve been working two jobs, so I guess I’m gonna use that money to find me a place to live. The thing about it is that I won’t be eighteen until December and shit, which is, like, less than three weeks away. And who the hell is gonna rent to a minor? What? Like I’m gonna be on the streets for three weeks? And I’m not even gonna go near a social worker. Not goin’ there. And hell, you think a guy like me is into adult supervision? I mean, I’ve lived without that all my fuckin’ life. Shit, I don’t have a clue as to what I’m gonna do. Does it look like I have a plan? This bench, that’s my plan. I’m like one of those dogs that jump the fence. They go, like, Ahh, freedom, and then they look around all confused and shit because they don’t have a plan.”
Samantha Diaz had a look on her face. I knew that look.
She leaned into Fito and gave him a shove with her shoulder. “I have an idea,” she said. “You and that dog may not have a plan, Fito. But I do . . .”
God, I loved her smile. She hadn’t smiled like that in a while.
Sam. Awesome.
“OKAY, WE CAN’T tell your dad.”
“I don’t like keeping secrets from him.” Not that I wasn’t keeping secrets.
“Well, we’re not doing anything wrong.”
“That’s true. We’re just not telling him what we’re up to.”
“We’re not really up to anything. We’re just helping our friend. Like that’s a bad thing. I mean, adults always want us to be good people and do nice things for others and all that, right?”
“Yeah—well, yeah.”
We were walking back toward the library after we’d eaten breakfast, and Sam and I had packed a lunch for Fito. Sam had made him promise to wait for us. He’d shrugged and said, “Like I got somewhere to go.”
I looked at Sam as we walked. “You sure this is okay?”
“You are the most risk-averse person I have ever fucking met. No bueno.”
“No bueno, what?”
“You’re a worrier. You’re seventeen years old and you’re a worrier.”
“So what? It means I care.”
“I care too. And look at me. Do I look worried?”
The discussion was so not fruitful. I shook my head.
“Look,” she said, “just don’t tell your dad. That’s all you have to do. Just do not tell. That’s not exactly trigonometry.” She rolled her eyes.
I rolled mine.
“Look,” she said. “Fito’s our friend, right? So we can help him on our own. We don’t always need permission to do the right thing. Or do we?”
Fito was sitting on his bench, reading a book in front of the library—kind of a normal sight. But it wasn’t really normal, not if you knew the story. Maybe everything looked normal on the outside. On the inside, well, there was always some kind of hurricane spinning around.
So there was Fito, sitting on a bench and reading a book, looking all normal. He waved as he saw us walking toward him. Yeah, normal. “I went into the library and checked out a book. I also brushed my teeth and washed up in the bathroom.” He didn’t seem as upset as before. I guess he’d had lots of experience in dealing with bad things happening to him.
“You’re sure it’s okay that I stay in your old house?” he asked Sam after she told him her plan.
“Absolutely. No one lives there. We’re going to put it up for sale. But my Aunt Lina said it needs some work. The house is just sitting there. All alone. Like you.”
That made Fito smile. He didn’t do a lot of smiling. Nope,
not a smiler. Not that he’d ever had much to smile about.
I handed Fito a lunch bag with a couple of sandwiches in it. “Hungry?”
He took the bag. “I’m always hungry.” And he wolfed it down. That guy did not eat. That’s not what he did. He wolfed.
There we were, me and Sam and Fito sitting in Sam’s living room. Not that she lived there anymore. There were a lot of boxes around, most things all packed up, waiting to be moved. “You know,” Sam said, “we almost moved everything out. We were going to put a lot of this stuff in storage, and then Lina said, ‘What for? We can leave it here.’” She looked at Fito. “So now you have a place to stay. And we still have electricity and we still have water. Very cool. The heater doesn’t work. It went haywire on us, and Mom didn’t get around to fixing it. Poor Mom.” Sam got this look on her face. “But we have lots of blankets. You won’t freeze to death. And sorry, no TV and no Internet.”
Fito just kind of shrugged. “Don’t do TV. And you think I had Internet at my house?” He looked around and kept nodding. And then, I thought he was sort of going to start crying. He looked away, then put his head down—but he kept himself together. “Why are you guys bein’ so nice to me?”
“Because we’re such fucking nice people.” That Sam. Her and that word. But she was the best. Maybe when she was old, she’d be all heart, like Mima. And everybody would love her. Well, maybe not. There was something wild in Sam. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have a heart. She had a heart, all right. A really good one.
We hung out with Fito most of the morning, listening to vinyl records. Mostly Beatles stuff. Fito was really into Abbey Road. I wondered if we were pretending that everything was fine when it wasn’t. I mean, getting thrown out of your own house was pretty drastic. And Sam and I had stuff going on in our heads and in our hearts. Just as I was watching Sam and Fito singing along with one of the songs, I remembered a dream I’d had the night before about Mima—how I couldn’t find her—and I thought about the letter my mom left me and wondered what I was so afraid of. Risk averse. That’s what Sam said I was. It was a nice way of saying I was afraid of trying new things. Maybe what it really meant was that I was a coward. Maybe I lost my temper with guys who acted like assholes because I wasn’t brave enough to talk to them.
I felt a pillow hit my head. “What are you thinking over there?”
I smiled at Sam. “Ah, just stuff.”
“I know,” she said. “Let’s order pizza, and Fito can tell us about his shitty childhood and I can tell you about what stage of grief I’m in today.”
“Yup, yup,” I said.
Fito looked at her—like What?
I texted Dad: Sam and I are hanging out with Fito. It wasn’t a lie, but why did I have this thing in me that didn’t feel all that good when I kept secrets? What was up with me anyway? I needed to stop analyzing myself. I didn’t have the credentials to be my own therapist.
I swear, that Fito could eat. How’d he stay so skinny? He was like Sam. Good thing we ordered a large pizza.
“Let’s play a game.” Sam was always making up games. And she always changed the rules and always said she could do that because, surprise, she was the one who’d invented the game.
“What game?” I said.
“What was the worst moment in your life? The only rule is that you have to be honest.”
“Okay, but only if the next game is ‘What was the best moment in your life?’”
“Okay, that’s fair. If you have to have your optimism fix for the day, I’m good with that.”
I could see Fito getting a kick out of the way Sam and I got along.
She looked at Fito. “You first.”
“Why me? I’m the new guy in this group.”
“Yup. Initiation.”
“Well, actually, the worst moment in my life is my whole life.”
“Wrong.”
I laughed. “Sam’s gonna be tough on you. She’s like that. I can even tell you why she said wrong.”
“All right, smart-ass, why did I say wrong?”
“Because it’s not specific. There’s no detail. If you don’t get to relish in Fito’s tragedy—if you can’t do that—it’s no fun.”
“I don’t do relish,” Sam said.
“Yeah, you do.”
“Oh, you think you know me so well.”
“Point out where I was wrong.”
She gave me one of her I-think-I-might-hate-you-at-this-very-moment smiles and turned her attention back to Fito. “We’re waiting.”
“My worst moment. I have a lot to pick from. Let’s see, it would have to be when I was about five. Maybe I was six. So this guy came to our house. And he and my mom, they were doing something. Smoking something out of a pipe, and my mom and him, they start taking off their clothes and shit, and they’re making out and shit, and I don’t really know what the hell is going on and so I ask them. And the guy goes after me. I mean, he goes after me. I thought he was going to kill me. I remember running out of the house to get away. I spent the night hiding in the backyard. In the morning, I didn’t go inside until I saw that his car was gone. I had dreams about that for a long time.” He looked at Sam. “How’d I do?”
Sam leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “This is a stupid game.”
But Fito smiled at her. “Not so fast. Your turn.”
We all started laughing. And who cared if it was just whistling in the dark? “Okay,” Sam said. “Mom left me alone once for a whole weekend. I was seven—”
I interrupted her. “Why didn’t you come over? Or call or—”
“You and your dad were somewhere out of town. Some art show or something. And I was scared. Mom told me not to open the door for anyone and just leave it locked. She said she’d be back on Sunday morning. Anyway, I was sleeping that Saturday night, and I woke up. I heard a crash, and I knew someone had broken the window to the back bedroom where my mother slept. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran out the front door.”
She looked sad.
Fito wore this really kind expression. “And then what happened?”
“I ran to the Circle K up the street, the place where you’re working now, and there was a police car parked there. And I saw two policemen in the store and they were paying for coffee. So I just went in and told them someone was breaking into my house. One of the policemen was super nice. ‘Did you forget your shoes?’ Anyway, I showed them where I lived, and we went inside, and someone had taken the television and some other stuff.
“And the policemen asked me where my mother was. I told them she was away on a family emergency, that my babysitter was here when I went to sleep, but when I heard the noise, she was gone.”
“Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t want my mother to get in trouble. I don’t know what happened, but my Aunt Lina got involved, and she told my mother she was going to take me away from her. I remember that. It was scary. Really, really scary, and my mom never left me alone again. Well—not until I was, like, thirteen. But I spent a lot of weekends at your house, Sally.”
“Why do you always call him Sally?”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “I think it’s a control thing,” I said.
That pissed Sam off. “A control thing? Really?”
“Yeah. If you get to name me, you get to tell me what to do.”
“You shit. Maybe it’s a sign of affection.”
Wow. I had actually never thought of that. “My bad,” I said.
“Yeah,” Sam said, “your bad.”
Fito, he was still thinking about Sam’s story. He looked at her and said, “That sucks, that she left you alone.”
“Yeah, well, my mother was a complicated woman. I used to hate her. Now I miss hating her.” She shrugged. “That came out wrong.”
“That came out perfectly,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah. Your turn, Sally.”
“Okay. I don’t have horror stories like you guys. See, when you guys are all grown up, you’re going to have all these stories about how you survived your childhood. Me, I won’t have any of those stories.”
And then, both Sam and Fito looked at me and it was as if they’d rehearsed, because they both blurted out at the same time, “Bullshit.”
“Bullshit? Really?”
“You heard us,” Sam said.
“Whatever,” I said. “Let me see. I think the worst moment of my life was that night when you called from in front of Walgreens, Sammy. I was so scared. I thought someone had really, really hurt you. That was the worst moment of my life.”
Sam leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “You are the sweetest boy I have ever known. And—don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe it’s not such a bad thing that you’re going through a crisis. You know, maybe it’s a good thing.”
“I’m going through a crisis?”
“You’re an idiot. But you are the sweetest boy in the world.”
“Yeah. Too bad you’re straight.” Fito was wearing this really great smile. I wondered how he could smile like that. His life was complicated, with a capital C. I guess all our lives were complicated. Even mine. Sam’s mother was dead. Fito didn’t have a place of his own. Mima was dying, and everything was changing. I felt as if I needed to do something to fix everything that was wrong with all the people I loved. But I couldn’t fix anything. Not a damn thing.
Dad
WHEN SAM AND I got home, Dad was sitting at the kitchen table going through some recipes. “Thanksgiving,” he said. “It’s coming up on us. I think I’ll bake the pies this year.”
“Cool,” I said. “We’ll help you.”
“Everyone will be in by Wednesday.”
“You excited, Dad?”
“Yeah, I am. It’ll be great to see Julian.” My Uncle Julian was the oldest. My dad was the youngest, and there was that big age spread. Yet they were so close. Dad was wearing one of those nostalgia smiles. He looked at me and smirked. “Of course, they’ll all spoil you.”
“Well, it’s not my fault I was the baby. Everybody was all grown up when I came along.”
My dad laughed. “You were such a great kid, always laughing. When you were about four, you had a habit of exploring everyone’s face with your small fingers. You used to run your hands across my face, and if I hadn’t shaved, you’d run to the bathroom, get my razor, and hand it to me. For some reason, you hated an unshaved face.”
I watched him as he went through his recipes. “What kind of pies are you gonna make, Dad?”
“Pumpkin. One apple pie for Julian. He doesn’t like pumpkin. And maybe a couple of pecan pies. Your Aunt Evie loves pecan pies.”
“And Mima?”
“Mima’s like me. Traditional pumpkin pie.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Me too,” Sam said. “Did you know I’ve never had a homemade Thanksgiving dinner?”
I looked at her. “What?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not an alien from Mars.”
“W
hat did you do on Thanksgiving?”
“My mom and I went to the Sun Bowl Parade—which always lasted forever—and we’d watch all the people, and then we’d go out to eat and to a movie. That was our Thanksgiving.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“I liked the parade and the movie. And you know, I didn’t really care.”
My dad shook his head. “Well, you’re in for a treat.”
“The best part of Thanksgiving is on Friday,” I said.
Sam was wearing a question mark on her face.
“On Friday we make tamales,” I said. “It’s a tradition.”
Samantha raised her arms, as if she were watching a soccer match and someone had scored a goal. “I’m totally going on Facebook with the tamale thing. For those haters out there who think I know absolutely nothing about being a Mexican.”
Dad just grinned.
Me. Sam. Us Doing This.
I WAS LYING in bed. Alone. Maggie was into this taking-turns-sleeping-with-us thing. Sometimes she slept with me. Sometimes she slept with Sam. That dog was all about equality.
I got this idea in my head to make a book for Mima. Well, not a book exactly, but photos with captions on them. I guess I wanted to give her something before she died. Yeah, she was going to die. I hated that word.
I remembered a story my dad told me about Mima, how she’d come upon some thieves on their farm. The thieves were stealing all the sacks of dried red chile she’d worked so hard to harvest. Sacks of chile she’d sell to help support her family. And there they were, these two guys putting the sacks in their truck. She threatened to cut them down like the weeds they were, and she managed to keep them at bay with a hoe until Popo arrived. I loved that story. I tried to picture her as a strong woman, holding a hoe like a baseball player at bat. Protecting what she’d worked for. Protecting her children, who were lined up behind her. I remembered one of our teachers, talking to another teacher in the hallway, saying, “Today’s kids don’t know shit about what we’ve been through.” Maybe she was right. But maybe she was wrong.