Bread & Water
Welcome to your very first glimpse of Popcorn 4 Dinner: Traff’kd @ Midnight! I had planned to put out a few articles related to how the novel has developed first, but I am just too excited to get this chapter to you first. So get your popcorn ready and enjoy!
The first time my father calls me a joto, I am five. I don’t know what the word means yet but I know what he means by the hate in his eyes, the rage on his lips, the disgust on his tongue as he spits it out—¡joto! Like chunks of sour milk in his coffee. Like a mouthful of blood. Like a fly that has the gall to die in his beer—¡joto!
The word reaches across the breakfast table and smacks me across the face, sucks the air from my lungs, rips my world out from under me. He reaches after it—with his big meaty mano, with his grip like a vice. He reaches across the table and pinches my tiny little dedos between his own giant ones. His eyes bulge, his face turns red like my favorite toy fire truck, like the paint on my nails, he barks—“Qué es esto?”[1]
My fingers turn red too, then white as he squeezes. I scrunch up my face and squeal—“You’re hurting me!” But he only pinches harder, demands to know what the fuck is on my uñas. Tears start in my eyes so I squeeze them shut to keep him from seeing what a bebe I am. Tears are for sissie lalas—that’s what he always says. Hombres nunca lloran.[2]
"¡Leticia!” he roars. “¡Leticia, venga! ¡Ahora!”[3]
Amá comes running up behind me, panic on her face. Guilt grabs hold of my stomach and twists. Apá is irate as he holds my painted fingernails up for her to see—"¡Mira!”[4]
Horror. Shock. Shame. They each take their turn expressing themselves on her face and in her ojos. She echoes Apá , screeching—"¿Qué es esto?” Eyes wide like an animal, she yanks my hand from his. She is furious. Rabid. Demanding to know how the polish got there. “¿Quién fue? ¿Quién hizo esto?” [5]
But I’m no tattletale. I’m no chismoso. My lips are sealed tight.
For that there are consequences—SMACK!
Amá ’s palm catches me on the back of the head—hard. Un golpe that sends my face slamming into the huevos and frijoles and fried papas s on my plate. When my head pops back up there are beans up my nostrils. Eggs and salsa on my forehead. Tears that can’t be held back any longer rush out of my eyes and down my cheeks. Snot and beans slide out of my nose, over my lips, and drip off my chin, onto my plate. My desayuno is turning to soup but that is the least of my five year old worries.
Apá rises out of his chair—his belly bumping the table, the chair scraping the linoleum with an ominous grunt as it’s forced backwards—and becomes a giant towering over me. It will be years before I realize he is actually a very short man. Much smaller than average. For now, he is a monster. Huge. Enormous. Terrifying.
Inches from my face, the monster bellows, “¡Ningún hijo mío va a ser un pinche joto!”[6]
In a flash he comes around to my side of the table and puts that meaty hand of his on the back of my neck, drags me from my seat, forces me out of the kitchen, down the hall, moving so fast my feet trip uno after el otro. His other hand, with its triple thick callouses and hairy knuckles same as the first, yanks open the coat closet door and hurls me inside. I smash into the back wall with a hollow thud and crumple onto a pile of zapatos. He stares down at me with fuego in his eyes, lips snarling like a lobo, breathing so hard his chest is heaving. His shoulders rise and fall with each word—"You want to be a faggot, you can stay in the closet where faggots belong!”
BAM! The door slams hard enough to shake the whole closet, the whole apartment.
Apá never yells at me in English. English is for public. For church. For show. Spanish is for family. Panic sets in as I choke on my tears in the dark. Have I been disowned? Kicked out of the familia? Is this where I live now? I pull my knees to my chest and rock back and forth, praying to Jesus for help. Snot and tears run down my face along with what’s left of my breakfast as I repent my evil ways and beg God to forgive my sins. The closet walls press in—crushing me with my own desperation.
Rewind. One day ago. The after-church picnic.
I’m soooo bored. None of the boys my age want to play with me. Or maybe I don’t want to play with them with their stupid peleas and competitions and sports that are hardly a good match for my Sunday best. Maybe I would rather sit quiet and look at magazines. Maybe I would rather lie on the grass and look up at the nubes or make daisy chains with the girls.
¡Si! All of those things are better than playing in the dirt or running across a field in the shoes I just shined this morning. Better than racing Matchbox cars when Amá only buys generics anyway. Better than luchando Transformers when I don’t own ninguno. Better than being made fun of. Better than being pushed into the mud. Better but not allowed. I’m old enough to know that, to know that I’m supposed to want to play with the other boys. At five, I’m old enough to realize there’s something different about me. The church ladies call me sensitive. Always generoso with the compliments—Apá calls me a wussy.
Yard sale lawn chair sagging under his nalgas, root beer that would be a real beer anywhere else in one hand, a plate full of carne and macaroni salad and pastel in the other—he starts in with a chide, “Why you still sitting here?”
Shrug. Focus on the grass instead. I pluck a few blades loose and roll them through my fingers, hoping he will get bored and leave me alone.
Apá thrusts his chin towards the boys in the field. He loses the church English, tells me to, “Vete a jugar.”[7]
My lower lip gets heavy. My head shakes side to side. Gnawing on a fried drumstick drenched in picante, he frowns at me. Waits for a reason but all I say is no quiero. “¿Por que?” he asks. “¿Tienes miedo?”[8]
My bottom lip gets heavier. I don’t say anything.
“You scared you gonna get hit by the ball or something?”
My breath hitches but I manage to squeak out, “No tengo miedo.”[9]
“¡Que lastima!” he huffs as he tries to hand his buckling paper plate to Amá . She’s got her head turned talking to someone else, not paying attention to him, so he growls, “¡Ten!” and shoves it towards her. His brow is folded over in anger, dotted in perspiration as he struggles to rise from the ancient lawn chair sunken low to the ground. Once he is standing he grabs me by the arm, just below my shoulder, and yanks me up with him. He barks, “¡Vamanos!”[10]—and drags me towards the field where the other boys are chasing a black and white pelota back forth.
My little legs running as fast as they can to keep up, I beg him to slow down. When he doesn’t my eyelids get heavy like my lip, the tears building up until they leak down my face. “¡No lloras!”[11] He’s irate but desperate to hide his temper in front of these people. Church people. People he hides his hate and alcoholism from. People that hide the same, maybe worse, from him, from each other, from God himself.
Without warning he stops at the edge of the field and I almost crash into his nalgas. He looks down at me, frowning, and points at the boys running back and forth after the ball. They’re falling down and getting back up, gritando, and high fiving, and tackling each other. Which is really confusing—isn’t fútbol supposed to be a no contact sport? Miro up at Apá but think better of asking him. He’s shaking his pointer finger at the field, saying, “¡Mira!”
He waits. I shrug. He rolls his eyes and explains—“Nobody’s getting hurt!”
That’s not what matters but he will nunca understand. ¡No quiero correr[12] in wingtips! ¡No quiero sudar[13]in my favorite suit! But I can’t tell him that. Those are not acceptable answers. With one hand on my back, he gives me a little shove, tells me to go make some friends.
Head down, I walk out onto the edge of the field, try to blend in with the pack, pretend to chase the ball back and forth, wait for Apá to stop paying attention to me and focus on his plato instead. At first opportunity—when his head is turned, mouth full of cake and chismes—then it is into the selva I go.
(Okay, okay, it’s an acre of pine trees behind the church. Not exactly a forest. But I’m five, remember? Entonces, it’s a forest to me.)
Everything changes in the forest. It’s quieter. Colder. The air is fresher. Alone, it feels safer here—I always feel safer alone. No one to tease me. No one to punish me for being myself. I lose myself in this world, in the trees standing tall and the logs fallen on the ground, in the flores, the abejas buzzing nearby, a mariposa with wings so white they’re almost invisible. Fluttering from plant to plant, not a care in the mundo. The mariposa living it’s best life. Inspired, I lift my arms, my own alas, and flap them at my sides. Soy the butterfly. Libre. Made from grace. Gliding on the wind, flying wherever my whims lead. The world disappears. There is only me. Solamente yo flapping my translucent wings, escondido among the pines and ferns and moss. Innocent. Nadien to scold me or tell me how wrong it is to be who I am or like what I like. Todo el mundo[14] like a big green blur and I can’t remember the last time I was this happy or this free from the cares and burdens of being five year old me.
Until—SNAP! An enormous risa pops me out of my imagination, drops me back into the real world. So delicada, so femenina though—nothing like raucous noise of the boys on the field. This laughter, this silky trill, is like lotion for my soul. Miro left, then right, but she spots me first. “¡Julio! ¡Ay mijo!”[15] Delia calls from where she sits with three friends, hidden in the trees listening to music. I rush towards her and she wraps her arms around me, catching me. She asks what I’m doing all of the way over here.
Shrug. “I didn’t want to play fútbol.” She frowns and tells me it’s not safe to wander off by myself, even at church. “Tengo cinco años ya,”[16] I remind her. “I’m a big boy now!"
Delia and her friends giggle and she pulls me onto her lap, asks me why I don’t want to play fútbol. I sigh—loud and dramatic maybe, because they giggle otra vez—and explain: I don’t want to get dirty right now, no quiero sudar in these clothes, no siento como gritando[17]. She squeezes me tight, says, “So sensitive mi Julio. So sensitive!” Her friends giggle some more and they all share a look.
Frowning, digo, “I’m not sensitive! I just don’t want to get dirty, okay? This is my favorite suit!” Dark grey with pin stripes, a bright red tie—Amá only lets me wear it once a month so it doesn’t wear out.
Delia giggles even more and squeezes me tighter. Tells me to ssshhh ssshhh—just a little broma, she wasn’t being serious. “Tranquilo,” she says, stroking my hair. “Tranquilo.”[18] Delia is my favorite cousin. She babysits me sometimes when my parents have a date night and she sneaks over chocolate and she nuncanuncanunca makes me read the Bible before bed.
“What are you doing out here anyway?” I ask, pretending to be suspicious. Which is silly of course. Maybe other teenagers would be out here smoking or drinking or something but not Delia. The worst she’s doing is listening to the Devil’s music.
As if to prove it, one of the other girls hits a button and the music stops. It’s my turn to giggle. The four of them exchange ANOTHER look but I don’t have time to focus on it because that’s when my jaw drops and my eyes go wide and my whole body feels like it is sparkling with delight.
If there really is a heaven, this must be it!
Spread out between them is every color of nail polish I have ever seen before, and more. Every morado and azul imaginable. Greens and pinks galore. Reds of course, and there are even yellows and oranges and browns. Black and white. Greys from light to dark. Sparkles and shimmers and opaques. Bases and overcoats. Nail files and buffers in every color, shape, and size. All I can say is, “Guau.[19]”
One of Delia’s friends picks out the brightest bottle of pink polish that could possibly exist. She holds it up and it matches the color on her lips. It’s hard not to cringe when she asks, “How about this one?” I don’t want to hurt her feelings, entonces I look at my cousin for help as I finger my tie. My red, oh so red, tie.
Delia comes to my rescue, a sly smile on her face as she plucks a deep red from the collection. Nodding furiously, digo, “That’s it! That’s the one!”
My excitement is tempered by a shame that can’t be understood at five. A shame that ensucias our fun after the manicure is done. My nails look fantastic, they match my tie perfect, so why do the girls want to take it off almost as soon as it’s seco? Maybe little boys aren’t supposed to feel like princesses. Maybe we’re not supposed to feel pretty. These are the lessons that life is teaching me.
I beg Delia to let me keep the polish on. She bites her lip like she’s thinking and sighs, tells me to keep my hands in my pockets. Especially around Apá —“Ya sabes[20] how he gets.”
Except it’s not possible to eat breakfast and keep one’s hands in one’s pockets al mismo vez. ¡Claro![21]
Fast forward. Back to the coat closet. Then fast forward some more, until I’ve been there a couple of hours.
I’m yelling for Amá but she’s not answering. “¡Amá ! ¡Amá , tengo que ir al baño!”[22]
Silence.
I call for her again, still no respuesta. No matter how many times I plead for her, she never comes. Me caigo a dormir[23] instead—curled up like a baby on top of her shoes.
No se how long I sleep like that, only that the door opens eventually and a whoosh of bright light wakes me up. I have to shield my eyes with one hand and squint but when I see her finally I smile big and reach out for mi mama but she doesn’t bend down, doesn’t pick me up. There is no sympathy on her cara. No understanding. No amor in her eyes.
“Ten,”[24] she says, her voice flat and emotionless.
WHOOSH!
She tosses in something soft, wrapped in plastico—a loaf of bread. Then she rolls a bottle of water across the floor and closes the door.
“¡Amá I” Crawling two feet to the door, I beg, “Amá , espera, ¡Por favor!”[25] Tears flood my eyes, pour down my cheeks. My breath hitches in my chest as I beg for her to come back.
Something changes in that moment. Something in me, something between me and my parents, something in my world—por siempre. Forever. There’s no going back now. No se how I know, but I know. I can feel it in the middle of my pecho, in that space where my ribs meet. I can feel it in my huesos—a knowing. An understanding of my lugar, of my familia, of the conditional nature of Amá y Apá ’s love, of how, given the choice between their son and religion, they would never choose me.
[1] “What is this?” [2] Men never cry. [3] “Leticia, come here! Now!” [4] “Look!” [5] “What is that?” “Who was it? Who did this?” [6] “No son of mine is going to be a fucking faggot!” [7] “Go play.” [8] “Why?”, “Are you scared?” [9] “I’m not scared.” [10] “Let’s go.” [11] “Don’t cry!” [12] I don’t want to run [13] I don’t want to sweat [14] The whole world [15] Technically “oh my son”, but it is used in the village sense, not the literal sense. [16] “I’m five years old now.” [17] I don’t feel like yelling [18] “Calm down” [19] “Wow.” [20] “You already know [21] at the same time. Clearly! [22] “Mom! Mom, I have to go to the bathroom.” [23] I fall asleep [24] “Have this” [25] Mom, wait, please!”