I wish my parents were Catholic.
Juan’s parents are Catholic. Rogelio’s too. And Sam’s. Alex’s. Ok, Alex lives with his Catholic abuelos but same difference. And they’ve all got it a hell of a lot easier than I do. Oh, what that sounds like loco talk? Your cushy white bread, Unitarian Universalist might think so. Your atheist would see it that way. All those rules. Rituals. Guilt. It sounds like torture.
Pschhh. Give me rules. Give me ritual. Give me guilt.
Just give me love.
Juan’s parents love him—no doubt about it. Rogelio’s mama crosses herself whenever he comes out of the baño eyes rimmed with kohl, but she loves him nonetheless. Sam = loved. Alex = loved. But me? Nah, man. Nah.
If they were Catholic my parents would pray for my soul. Love the sinner, not the sin—or algo like that. Maybe I’m being naïve but pienso que they would never imagine doing the things that they have done to me under our church’s influence. Juan’s parents have never kicked him out. Rogelio’s either. Or Samuel’s. Or Alex’s. And Samuel is absolutely flaming, like he’s practically a walking stereotype. Still, the worst his parents do is wag their eyes at him. When Alex’s strep throat turned out to be HPV from his 30-year-old novio his abuela cried and begged him to be more careful. She didn’t beat him with a wooden spoon and throw him into some weird religious prison camp.
Todavia tengo the scar from that one. But it wasn’t HPV. I’ve never had a 30-year-old novio thank you very much. Gross! What happened was, I forgot to clear my search history on that dinosaur of a desktop we have in the living room and, well, how was I supposed to know my hermanito would go to search toys for boys and pull up . . .
Rewind.
“¡Hijole la chingada!”[1] Amá’s voice screeches through the apartment, into my room where it sets my corazon to racing and sends a cold drop of sweat trickling down one armpit. No se how I know, but I know—my secreto has been found out.
The screeching continues: “¿Que es esta mierda? ¡Apagalo! ¡Apagalo ahora!”[2]
My little brother’s voz says, “But Amá.” So timid, it barely reaches me through the paper-thin walls.
“Dijo que lo apagas. ¡Ahora!”[3]
I freeze, ojos wide, my breath stuck in my throat. Wait for it. Wait . . .
“¡Julio!”
Her feet pound the floor, THUD THUD THUD, as she storms down the hallway. My puerta flies open, slams into the wall, dents the cheap sheetrock. Her face is red. Beet red. Scary red. Her ojos are so wide the whites are showing ariba, abajo, 360 degrees around dark burning coals. Her fists are clenched, one of them around the big wooden spoon she uses to stir the chile.
She stops just long enough to ask me how I could dare bring such mierda into her house. But with no pause for a respuesta, she rushes towards me like a storm, spoon raised over her head, rage bubbling out of her pores. Eyes on fire, filled with odio.
Odio. That’s what my parents give me. Gracias a Jesús. It’s for my own good. The preacher says so. Spare the rod, spoil the child. Fast forward. Rewind. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. Cada vez. Up there at his pulpit, shaking his fist, threatening fuego and brimstone. Voz booming, blaming the homosexuals, the harlots, the feminists, for . . . for what exactly?
“The end times are upon us!”
Ah gotcha. My sexual preference is bringing about the end of the mundo. Glad he cleared that up.
The best part is always the red-faced bellowing: “When a man lies with another man he might as well lay with Satan!” Y, “When a wife will not submit to her husband, you can be sure she is having an affair with the Devil!”
I roll my eyes so much in church that they siempre need a rest on the ride home. And a vezes my parents piensan que estoy dormida[4] and talk crap about me right there in the truck.
My mom, sadness in her voice like she’s swallowing tears, will say something like, “Ay mi amor, ¿Que vamos a hacer?”[5]
Apá will sigh. He always sighs.
So Amá will go on with her lamentations about how she can’t believe her bebé is a homosexual, wailing and begging God to explain how he could do this to them. And Apá will assure her: “Ay mi corazon. No es culpa de Dios. Tú lo sabes. Julio es el que elige una vida de pecado.”[6]
Then Amá will sniffle. She always sniffles just like Apá always sighs. And she nods a lot, manos clasped in front of her as she prays. She begs Jesus to lead me out of temptation. Begs him to forgive me. To bring me back to the luz, to the fold—all of that nonsense. I’ve heard her prayers so many times I could recite them right along with her. Probably even say them for her. Maybe even amp it up a little—put some techniques from drama class to use, really deliver it. Give her a good razon to worry about my eternal alma.
Rewind. Fast forward. Whichever it is. Back to my cuarto. Back to my cama. Curled up in the fetal position, arms over my head, protecting my cara as the spoon comes down CRACK! CRACK!
“¡Amá! ¡Por favor! Stop! I’m sorry!”
CRACK!
“¡No me digas ‘¡Amá!’” CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! “¿Cómo puedes mirar algo así? ¡Cochino!”[7]
She raises her brazo above her head, as high as she can, and brings it down. I try to duck, to block—but no suerte. CRACK!!! The spoon comes down on the back of my cabesa and SNAP! breaks in two. My head pulses and stings. I reach back to feel the goose egg forming and it’s mojado tambien.
“¡Me cortaste!” I scream, staring at my mano—fingers coated in blood. “¡Eres un monstro! Un monstro!”[8] Ya estoy llorando—no, not just crying—sobbing. Freaking out. My cara is red. My body is shaking. She tells me just wait until my father regresas[9] del trabajo. Then I’ll really have something to cry about.
If she thinks I’m waiting around for that psycho to come home with his calloused fists and tequila on his breath, well she’s got another thing coming. Agarro my mochila off the bed, dump out all of the libros, try to shove some clothes in instead but she’s yanking at it, demanding to know what I’m doing.
Jaw clenched, eyes straight ahead, no doy una answer as I try to dodge around her, past her. Finally she lets go of my mochila only to grab onto one of my brazos, her uñas digging into my skin. She tries to pull me back as I forge forward, out of the room.
“¿Adónde vas?”[10]
I rush down the hall and out of her grasp but she’s still yelling after me. “¡Vuelve aquí ahora mismo!”[11]
Through the living room, past Angelo staring at me like he saw the Devil, Amá yelling threats in rapid-fire Spanish. Mi mano is already on the doorknob when she screams at the top of her lungs—"¡No salgas de esta casa!”[12]
I open it anyway and words meant to hurt, deliberate y forceful, explode from her mouth. Without looking back I can feel the hatred on her face, the disgust in her eyes, as she tells me that I am no son of hers. Puedo ser homosexual o puedo ser su hijo. ¿Pero los dos? ¡Claro que no![13]
The door slams behind me—silencing my mother’s lengua venenosa. A deep breath invites the frozen air to stab at my chest, then billow out of me like a nube. Then it’s down the stairs in peace and quiet for a few precious seconds. A few precious seconds to breathe easy before the storm reaches the front door—throws it open and erupts for the whole apartment complex to hear. Screeching about how sorry voy a ser if I don’t stop right now, get my nalgas back up those stairs, back inside. Threatening to pegarme again—but this time ¡Vas a ver!, she says, what real pain is. ¡Vas a ver! what happens to sinners, to homosexuals, to boys who love other boys more than their own mothers.
My foot lands on the last step and Amá’s voice becomes spiteful. Like she’s not just angry—she wants to hurt me. Like a knife in my back when she says que no tengo nowhere to go. Que I’ll be back ¡vas a ver!
Her voz follows me. Tells me to stay away, don’t bother coming back—jotos aren’t welcome in her home. As if her threats and accusations are the kind of thing that would bring me corriendo back into her arms that pummel instead of embrace anyway.
It is something that I have suspected for a long time of course—but this is the moment when I know, I mean really know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my mother hates me. And my dad right along with her. Their religion says that people like me are evil. So instead of finding a new religion, they hate their own hijo, their own flesh and sangre. Whatever. It’s cool. Jesus over Julio. I’m just a joto anyway. How could they ever love me?
Rewind. To when my life went wrong.
To before my mother pushed me out of her womb, before she married my father.
Rewind to Paula and Art.
No los conocía[14]—obviously—but they ruined my life regardless. For reals. It might sound like one, but this is not an exaggeration. Probablemente, they ruined a whole lot of others too.
You see, Paula and Art were misioneros, called to spread Jesus’ love to the good people of Calderitas—a little pueblo at the tip of the Yucatan peninsula in Quintana Roo, México. The perfect place to sip piña coladas and munch on langostas next to turquoise seas, all on dollars marked for charity.
But wait—isn’t everyone in that area already catolico? Yup, the mayoridad for sure, with some traditional Mayan spirituality sprinkled in. But that didn’t matter to Paula or Art or the evangelical church back in America that sponsored them. They were there to convert. Who cares that this new religion was the same as the old religion? Their goal was to spread the church’s reach into the southern hemisphere. To collect tithes even from the poorest of the poor. To spread cultural hegemony or whatever those big words my primo Roman likes to use. That was their modus operandi—their whole point of being there. Multiply the number of non-Catholic Christians in México. Central America. The world. Convert so more could be converted.
Whoever asked them anyway? Whoever said—Hey! You! Gringo! Come preach your slightly different belief system at me like I don’t already have my hands full with the one I got.
So anyways they started with these youth groups. Just praying and singing and stuff—but way livelier than anything at mass. There was music—¡en ingles!—and food. Lots and lots of food.
It was more fiesta than ritual or sermon. Perfect for Amá before she was Amá. She would never admit it now, but as just Leticia she was a rebel, always looking for ways to get under her own mother’s piel. And this different version of the same God, who let her trade in kneeling and crossing herself for speaking in made-up words and throwing herself to the ground in the espiritu, was just diferente enough to piss off her parents.
This version of God allowed Apá, who was just Pedro back then, to trade in confessions for the automatic dismissal of his carnal pecados. And while his own Amá claimed that wasn’t good enough, Paula and Art insisted—A priest cannot forgive your sins! Only the blood of Christ can.
And while they were at it—the Virgin Mary is not God. (¿Quien ever said she was?)
Your altars are graven idols.
Your Dia de los Muertos is a portal to Hell straight from Satan himself.
This was God’s true religion. This was the only real version of Christianity. Paula and Art assured them—catolicos would burn in hell right along with the atheists and Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses and pagans and brujas and all manner of diablo worshipers.
The irony in their thinking of this new-religion-same-as-the-old-religion as some form of rebellion is lost on them, even now. They can’t see how their act of rebellion los atraparon. How their desire to be different from their parents ensnared them in a belief system covertly stricter than Catholicism, and even more demanding of their obedience than their overbearing padres had ever been. And they sure as hell can’t see the damage that it is doing to me.
Fast forward to my fists jammed into my pockets, to my head hung like a battering ram against the cold and the wind. In my hurry to escape, I forgot how cold Oregon Januarys are. It would be nice to have a hat, some gloves, a pinchi jacket—but it’s too late for that now. There’s no going back.
Of course, the pregunta now is where is there to go? No tengo dinero[15], or a car, nothing. Maybe Amá was right, maybe I don’t have anywhere to go. But the way she treats me, the way THEY treat me, the way they straight up hate me, well, anywhere is better than home—mejor on the streets or under a bridge—whatever.
[1] “Son of a bitch!”
[2] “What is this shit? Turn it off! Turn it off now!”
[3] “I said turn it off. Now!”
[4] sometimes (my parents) thin I am asleep
[5] “Oh my love, what are we going to do?”
[6] “Oh my heart. It is not God’s fault. You know that. Julio is the one choosing a life of sin.”
[7] “Don’t you Amá me!” “How can you look at something like that!” Cochino means pig but is used in this instance to mean a dirty pervert.
[8] “You cut me!” “You’re a monster! A monster!”
[9] A note on conjugations: the wrong conjugation of a word is occasionally used for the purpose of word flow. Technically just regresa should be used here but the s is added so that it flows better with the English words before it.
[10] “Where are you going?”
[11] “Get back here right now!”
[12] “Come back here right now!” “Listen to me Julio!” “Do not leave this house!”
[13] I can be homosexual or I can be her son. But both? Of course not.
[14] I didn’t know them
[15] I don’t have money