The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “How many pairs of shoes can you love?”

  “It’s like Dad says, ‘Love is infinite.’”

  “I don’t think he had shoes in mind.”

  When we walked back into the living room, Sam stopped. “What are those?”

  On a small bookshelf Fito had set up next to the couch was a set of leather books.

  Sam walked over and picked one up. She opened it. “Wow,” she said. “It’s a journal. Fito keeps a journal.” She shut it, then picked up another one. “Yup, they’re all journals. Beautiful ones, too.” I thought she was going to start to read the one she was holding.

  “Put it down, Sam,” I said.

  “He never told us he kept a journal.”

  “Is it something we need to know?” Sam had that look on her face. “Don’t answer that question,” I said.

  “There’s a whole life inside these journals.”

  I knew Fito was in for it.

  Sam didn’t have it in her to leave things alone.

  Homework. Mothers.

  I WAS WHINING at the dining room table as I did my homework. “Why do they make us take math?”

  Sam said, “Just shut up and work.”

  “Don’t feel like working,” I said.

  “I’m the one who used to say things like that.”

  “Maybe we’ve traded emotional spaces.”

  “How’s it feel to be out of control?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  I got up and went to the refrigerator. I don’t know what I was looking for. There were some store-bought flour tortillas, and I thought of Mima. And I don’t know why, but I thought of my mom.

  As if Sam were on the same wavelength, she said, “It’s time to do something with Mom’s ashes.”

  “What are you planning?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’ve been giving it some thought. And I think I know.”

  “You want to fill us in?”

  “Yeah,” Fito said.

  “We’ll do it soon,” she said.

  “That’s all?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Then she looked at me with that question mark on her face. “Where’s your mom buried?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I never really asked.”

  “I think you should ask.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Sam turned her gaze toward Fito. “Where’d they bury your mom, Fito?”

  “They cremated her.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “I called my uncle. He said he was sorry about the whole thing at my mom’s funeral.”

  “You close to him?”

  “Nah.”

  “You want to be?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a dealer. That’s where he gets his money. He thinks he’s all fuckin’ superior because he doesn’t do drugs and shit. He lives off addicts. He’s scum. Let’s not talk about it.” Then he looked at me. “Let’s make coffee.”

  I nodded.

  Fito kept talking. “Anyway, they spread her ashes in the middle of the desert.”

  “Did she like the desert?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she did.”

  “Why didn’t they call you?” I could tell Sam was pissed.

  “I don’t matter to them.”

  “Screw them,” I said.

  “Yeah.” And then there were those tears on his face again. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to be a downer and shit.”

  “You’re not,” I said. “You know what? Let’s get the car keys and get us double chocolate mochas with whipped cream.”

  Fito shot me a crooked smile. “I could go for some of that.”

  “Me too,” Sam said.

  I wondered if drinking double chocolate mochas at nine thirty at night was related to that whistling-in-the-dark thing. Maybe so.

  Snow. Cold. Fito. Mima.

  I TEXTED SAM WHEN I woke up: It’s snowing.

  No answer.

  So I called her. “It’s snowing.”

  “No way.”

  “Look out the window.”

  We were both up and dressed in a nanosecond.

  Dad was drinking coffee, and Marcos was sitting across from him. I shot my dad a look. He looked back at me and said, “No, he didn’t spend the night.”

  “So what if he had?”

  Sam walked into the kitchen and shot Dad and Marcos a smile.

  “He didn’t spend the night,” I said.

  “So what if he had?”

  Marcos rolled his eyes. “Couple of clowns.”

  Then I said to Marcos, “Thanks for helping Fito.”

  Marcos had a puzzled expression on his face.

  “I mean, for helping to get him to see a therapist.”

  “It’s no big deal,” he said.

  “It kind of is,” I said.

  Marcos nodded. “That kid deserves a break.”

  “Yup,” I said. “He’s a good guy.”

  “Yup,” Sam said. “We love him.”

  Dad had a great smile on his face. I looked out the kitchen window. “It’s really snowing.”

  “You can go play in it. There’s no school today.”

  One thing I loved about El Paso was that if a couple of snowflakes fell on the ground, school was canceled. Sweet. Sam was already texting Fito. I poured myself a cup of coffee and thought about Marcos sitting there. I really wanted to know why he was here so early in the morning, but I would have looked like a real idiot if I started asking too many questions. It wasn’t any of my business. But it sort of was. And, well, I wasn’t used to this boyfriend thing Dad had going on—​even though I had wanted him to have someone. I guess me wanting Dad to have a boyfriend really was just theoretical.

  It was coming down hard when Sam and I stepped outside. Fito was on his way. Sam started dancing around in the snow in the front yard, and I took some pics of her on my phone, then started dancing around too. I thought of Mima’s yellow leaves. And then I felt a snowball smack me on the side of the head.

  I looked up and saw Fito laughing his fool head off. That was, until Sam got him right in the face with a snowball of her own. We started having a huge snowball fight in the middle of the street, and we were running around, ducking behind parked cars, teaming up with each other, then betraying each other, and a few of the other neighborhood kids came out and joined the fun, and then it seemed like there were kids coming from everywhere, from every house, from every nearby street—​and even Dad and Marcos were having a snowball fight in the front yard, and I thought, How great is this?

  And it was all so fantastic.

  We were playing! We were playing!

  One minute there was a fight in a funeral home and ugly words were flying through the air like bullets—​and a few days later there was a snowball fight and the sound of Sammy squealing with laugher and Fito kneeling on the ground because he couldn’t stand up straight because he was laughing so hard.

  God, it really was beautiful. Really, really beautiful.

  Rat

  I WAS HOPING for less drama in my life. And hoping it would be calm. Yeah, I was going for calm. But no. Something else had to happen. Sure it did. So on the last day of school before the Christmas break, it happened. On my way to lunch, I got a text from Sam: Get to Fito’s locker now!

  I trotted down to Fito’s locker, and Sam was at her drama best, waving a note in front of Enrique Infante’s face. “You spell faggot with two g’s, you ignoramus.”

  I got right in the middle of it. “Hey, hey, what the—”

  “This asshole was pasting this”—​she showed me the piece of paper with the word FAGOT it on it—​“on Fito’s locker.” Just then Ms. Salcido, my English teacher, joined our little group. Sam was too busy cussing out Enrique Infante to notice, yelling, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kick your bigoted little ass.”

  “Try it, bitch.”


  And that was it. Sam slapped him so hard he fell back, stunned. I knew he was gonna go for her, so I stepped between them, and I was about to pop him one right between the eyes when Ms. Salcido was all over us like chocolate icing on a cake.

  “In the principal’s office right now!” Mr. Montes and Ms. Powers had shown up as reinforcements. Enrique Infante wasn’t helping himself by repeating, “I can’t believe that bitch slapped me,” and it took everything I had not to hit the little shit. As we marched to the principal’s office, Sam was holding tight to the evidence and was explaining to Ms. Powers that Enrique had it coming. Fito and I, well, we were keeping our mouths shut.

  When we all filed into Mr. Cisneros’s office, he shook his head. He looked at me and Enrique and said, “I thought you two were supposed to keep away from each other.”

  I don’t know what got into me, but I was feeling feisty. I mean verbally feisty, not, you know, fist feisty. “Well, it didn’t quite work out according to plan,” I said. “A couple of weeks ago I passed this clown in the hall and he calls me a faggot. Apparently he’s fallen in love with that word.”

  Sam jumped right in. “And when Fito and I were walking toward his locker, this joker”—​she pointed at Enrique—​“was taping this note to Fito’s locker.” She placed the evidence on Mr. Cisneros’s desk. “And on top of everything else, he can’t even spell.”

  I could see Ms. Powers trying like hell to keep from smiling.

  Mr. Cisneros smiled a snarky smile at Sam. “Well, we’ve been here before, haven’t we?”

  Then Enrique Infante chimed in, “And she slapped me. I mean, she slapped me, like, hard.”

  “You deserved it,” I said. “And you were about to go at her. You were about to hit a girl. And you would’ve if I hadn’t stepped in. You’re lucky I didn’t mop the floor with you, buddy. You have some class, don’t you?”

  Mr. Cisneros looked at the teachers. “Which one of you was first on the crime scene?”

  Ms. Salcido spoke up. “I heard an argument, stepped out into the hall just as Mr. Infante let out the B word in reference to Ms. Diaz.”

  Mr. Cisneros looked at me. “Are you going to have your dad in here again?” That’s when I knew that Dad must have really gone off on him—​in a good way, a very Vicente Silva kind of way. “That depends on how this goes,” I said.

  Mr. Cisneros looked straight at Enrique. “You’ve been in this office, what? Four times this year? Apologize to Mr.”—​he looked at Fito—​“what was your name again?”

  “Fito.”

  “Apologize to Fito here for using that word. I suppose you were trying to humiliate him in front of the entire student body.”

  Enrique Infante, he was doing that sullen thing again.

  Mr. Cisneros was starting to get annoyed. “I said, a-pol-o-gize.”

  “I’m sorry,” Enrique said.

  “I’m not sure Mr. Fito over here heard that.”

  “I’m sorry, Fito.” Enrique Infante was not happy. Not happy. I thought I could see his ears burning. Not that he was oozing sorrow. Nope.

  “Now apologize to Ms. Diaz for referring to her in that manner.”

  “I’m sorry, Samantha.”

  “I didn’t quite hear that,” she said. I tell you, that Sam, she had some stuff in her.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  Then Mr. Cisneros looked straight into Sam’s eyes. “Now you apologize for slapping him.”

  “Enrique Infante, I’m sorry I slapped you.” She almost, almost hid the sarcasm. But not quite.

  Then Mr. Cisneros did something that nearly made me want to forgive him for being such a pompous asshole. He ripped up the misspelled piece of paper with the word fagot on it.

  We met at my locker after the last bell. “God,” I said, “what a day.”

  Sam was grinning. That girl could do some serious grinning. “I had kind of a great day.”

  “Yeah, you got to slap Enrique Infante.”

  “I’ve been dying to do that since last year. He’s a rat. Still, you know that thing about jumping in the sewer to catch a rat?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m a work in progress, Sally.”

  “Yup. But you know, Sam, things could have turned out really bad. That guy could have seriously hurt you. Good thing I was right around the corner. Lucky you.”

  “I know, Sally. And what would you have done—​if he had hurt me?”

  “Sam, I don’t even want to think about that.”

  “I know what I would have done,” Fito said. “I would have killed that pinche rata.”

  “Killing someone. No bueno. When’s your next session with your therapist?”

  Fito smiled. “Good one, Sally.” Now two people were calling me Sally.

  The truth was, I would have really hurt Enrique Infante. If he’d laid just one finger on Sam, I would have really hurt him. But what if I had hurt him? What if I had? I heard my dad’s voice in my head: Figure it out, son.

  Mima. Me.

  I PHONED MIMA every day. She always called me hijito de me vida. Little son of my life. It didn’t have the same ring to it in English. Sometimes things just don’t translate. Maybe that’s why there were so many misunderstandings in the world. On the other hand, if everybody spoke only one language, the world would be a pretty sad place. Not that I spoke French or Italian or Hebrew.

  But Spanish was holy because it was Mima’s language. And my dad’s language—​even though you couldn’t tell. He didn’t speak English with an accent like Mima. But when he spoke Spanish, it came out perfectly. That language belonged to him the way it would never belong to me or to Sam. Well, at least I didn’t speak Spanish like a gringo. Yeah, I had issues about that. The only thing that mattered was that my uncles and aunts always treated me as if I were theirs. As if I belonged to them. No one in my family ever made me feel adopted. Whatever that feeling was.

  I called Mima. I heard her fading voice say, “Hello.”

  “Hi, Mima.”

  “Hi, hijito de mi vida.”

  I recorded a part of the phone call, and Mima didn’t know it. So her voice would never be extinct.

  Part Six

  In the distance, I can see a storm coming in, the dark clouds and the lightning on the horizon moving toward me. I wait and I wait and I wait for the storm. And then it comes, and the rains wash away the nightmares and the memories. And I’m not afraid.

  Sam. Fierce. Yup.

  CHRISTMAS BREAK. And I felt I needed one. We went out to a movie, Fito and Sam and I. We ate lots of popcorn and afterward dropped by some guy’s house. Fito scored us beer. One each. Well, it was Christmas break. We went to Sam’s place and made sandwiches and hung out.

  As we were eating our sandwiches and having our beers, Sam said, “I really hate that Enrique Infante. Where do rats like that come from?”

  I shrugged. “Families.”

  Fito nodded. “Fucked-up families.”

  “Right.” Sam said. “Exactly.” And then she looked at me and said, “You and me and Dad and Maggie, we are the normalest family on the planet.”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know if we’re normal.”

  “Guess not,” Sam said. “And you know what really pisses me off? People’s attitudes. Enrique Infante going around calling people faggots. And then Charlotte Bustamante comes up to me last week and goes, ‘Isn’t it kind of creepy to live, like, with this gay guy? I mean, I’m sorry about your mom and everything, but isn’t it kind of—’ I stopped her dead in her tracks. I went off on her like You. Would. Not. Believe.”

  I pictured the whole scene.

  Sam, she was all about telling the story. “I looked right at her and said, ‘I know you get this a lot, but it bears repeating. You’re an imbecile. And that thing about being sorry about my mom. Don’t go around telling people you’re sorry when you don’t mean it. The next time I hear you do that, I’m. Going. To. Slap. You. Silly.’”

  I gave her one of my grins. “Really?
You’d slap her silly?”

  “Well, no. But can’t I just enjoy the fleeting thought?”

  “No bueno,” I said.

  “No bueno,” she said.

  But I think we were both laughing to ourselves.

  Fito. Sam. Me. Texting.

  FITO CAME OVER while I was making breakfast. “How come I’m not in on the word-for-the-day thing?”

  I shrugged. “I never thought about it. You’re not in on the running thing either.”

  “Screw that,” he said. “I’m too skinny for running. And besides, I’ve been running all my life.”

  “That makes no sense,” Sam said.

  “I got my own logic goin’ on here,” Fito said.

  “You sure as hell do,” I said. “Want some breakfast?”

  “You have to ask?”

  I fried him up a couple of eggs as Sam made him some toast. He stared at the plate in front of him. “No bacon?”

  “Take it up with Sam. She ate it all.”

  I sat down with a cup of coffee. “Word for the day,” I said. “’K, Fito. Your call.”

  He took out his iPhone and texted me and Sam: Wftd = mothers.

  Sam and I read his text. Sam texted back: Mothers. Yeah.

  Me: Yeah

  Fito: My mother’s name was Elena. Actually Maria Elena

  Sam: Sweet

  Me: Yeah, sweet

  Sam: Sylvia. Sylvia Anne

  Me: Sylvia Anne? Nice

  Sam: Sally? Urs?

  Me: Alexandra. They called her Sandy

  Sam: Never knew that! Wow

  Fito: Wow. Alexandra. I like

  Sam: They had names

  Me: Yeah, they had names

  We put down our phones. It was as if we’d learned something but didn’t quite know how to put it into words. “Let’s play catch,” I said.

  “Without Dad?” Sam said.

  “Yeah, without Dad.”

  Ashes

  I WAS IN BED, actually thinking about opening my mom’s letter. I got a text from Sam: Tomorrow. Sylvia’s ashes.

  Me: ?

  Sam: Talked to Aunt Lina. Talked to Dad. Done deal