I LIKED WHEN MY MOM TOLD ME ABOUT HOW SHE FELT
about things. She seemed to be able to do that. Not that we talked that much, but sometimes we did and it was good and I felt like I knew her. And I didn’t feel like I knew a lot of people. When she talked to me, she was different than when she was being my mother. When she was being my mother, she had a lot of ideas about who I should be. And I hated that, fought her on that, didn’t want her input.
I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be. Maybe if you weren’t so quiet, Ari . . . Maybe if you could just be more disciplined . . . Yeah, everyone had suggestions as to what was wrong with me and what I should become. Especially my older sisters.
Because I was the youngest. Because I was the surprise. Because I was born too late.
Because my older brother was in prison and maybe my mother and father blamed themselves. If only they’d said something, done something. They weren’t going to make that mistake again. So I was stuck with my family’s guilt—a guilt that not even my mother would talk about. She sometimes mentioned my brother in passing. But she never said his name.
So now I was the only son. And I felt the weight of a son in a Mexican family. Even though I didn’t want it. But that was the way it was.
It made me mad that I’d felt like I’d betrayed my family by mentioning my brother to Dante. It didn’t feel good. There were so many ghosts in our house—the ghost of my brother, the ghosts of my father’s war, the ghosts of my sister’s voices. And I thought that maybe there were ghosts inside of me that I hadn’t even met yet. They were there. Lying in wait.
I picked up my old journal and thumbed through the pages. I found an entry that I’d written a week after I turned fifteen:
I don’t like being fifteen.
I didn’t like being fourteen.
I didn’t like being thirteen. I didn’t like being twelve.
I didn’t like being eleven.
Ten was good. I liked being ten. I don’t know why but I had a very good year when I was in the fifth grade.
The fifth grade was very good. Mrs. Pedregon was a great teacher and for some reason, everyone seemed
to like me. A good year. An excellent year. Fifth grade. But now, at fifteen, well, things are a little awkward.
My voice is doing funny things and I keep running into things. My mom says my reflexes are trying to keep up with the fact that I’m growing so much.
I don’t much care for this growing thing.
My body’s doing things I can’t control and I just don’t like it.
All of a sudden, I have hair all over the place. Hair under my arms and hair on my legs and hair around my—well—hair between my legs. Okay, I’m not liking it. I even got hair growing on my toes. What’s that about?
And my feet keep getting bigger and bigger. What’s with the big feet? When I was ten, I was kinda small and I wasn’t worried about hair. The only thing I was worried about was
trying to speak perfect English. I made up my mind that year
—when I was ten—that I wasn’t going to sound like another Mexican. I was going to be an American. And when I talked I was going to sound like one.
So what if I don’t look exactly like an American. What does an American look like, anyway?
Does an American have big hands and big feet and hair around his—well, hair between his legs?
Reading my own words embarrassed the hell out me. I mean, what a pendejo. I had to be the world’s biggest loser, writing about hair, and stuff about my body. No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?
I don’t know why I didn’t throw the journal across the room. I kept thumbing through it randomly. And then I found a section about my brother.
There are no pictures of my brother in our house.
There are pictures of my two older sisters on their wedding days. There are pictures of my mother in her first communion dress. There are pictures of my father when he was in Vietnam. There are pictures of me as a baby, me on the first day of school, me holding a first place trophy with my little league teammates.
There are pictures of my three nieces and four nephews.
There are pictures of my grandparents, who are all dead. All over the house, there are pictures.
But there are no pictures of my brother. Because he’s in prison.
No one in my house talks about him. It’s like being dead.
It’s worse than being dead. At least the dead get talked about and you get to hear stories about them. People smile when they tell those stories. And they even laugh. Even the dog we used to have gets talked about.
Even Charlie, the dead dog, gets a story. My brother doesn’t get any stories.
He has been erased from our family history. It doesn’t seem right. My brother is more than a word written on a chalkboard. I mean I have to write an essay on Alexander Hamilton and I even know what he looks like.
I’d rather write an essay on my brother.
I don’t think anyone at school would be interested in reading that essay.
I wondered if I would ever have the courage to ask my parents to tell about my brother. I asked my older sisters once. Cecilia and Sylvia both shot me a look. “Don’t ever bring him up.”
I remember thinking that if they’d had a gun, she’d have shot me.
I caught myself whispering over and over again, “my brother is in prison, my brother is in prison, my brother is in prison.” I wanted to feel those words in my mouth as I spoke them aloud. Words could be like food—they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something. “My brother is in prison.” Those words tasted bitter.
But the worst part was that those words were living inside me. And they were leaking out of me. Words were not things you could control. Not always.
I didn’t know what was happening to me. Everything was chaos and I was scared. I felt like Dante’s room before he’d put everything in order. Order. That was what I needed. So I took my journal and started writing:
These are the things that are happening in my life (in no particular order):
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I got the flu and I feel terrible and I also feel terrible inside.
-
I have always felt terrible inside. The reasons for this keep changing.
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I told my father I always had bad dreams. And that was true. I’d never told anyone that before. Not even myself. I only knew it was true when I said it.
-
I hated my mom for a minute or two because she told me I didn’t have any friends.
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I want to know about my brother. If I knew more about him, would I hate him?
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My father held me in his arms when I had a fever and I wanted him to hold me in his arms forever.
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The problem is not that I don’t love my mother and father. The problem is that I don’t know how to love them.
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Dante is the first friend I’ve ever had. That scares me.
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I think that if Dante really knew me, he wouldn’t like me.
