Mexican WhiteBoy

by Matt De La Peña

  1

  Uno’s sitting on the living room couch, staring at his mom’s little static-ridden TV. He’s watching an old show about this group of white teenagers living in Beverly Hills. But he’s not really watching. He’s thinking about how he’s finally gonna tell his mom what’s up. Soon as she gets home from the hotel he’s gonna do it. Has to. She needs to know he’s decided to do his last year of high school in Oxnard. Get a fresh start. Try out for the baseball team. He can’t put this talk off any longer, especially now that he has the money.

  He glances at the clock again: 3:45. His mom cleans her last room at 3:30 today. She’ll be back any minute. Uno feels a wave of butterflies pass through his stomach. He knows she won’t take the news well. Much as he gets in her way, in Ernesto’s way, she’ll still cry. It’ll still mess her up a little. Either that or she’ll start yelling and carrying on, cursing him in Spanish, listing all the reasons he can’t do it. Why his dad’s no good. He knows this little talk won’t turn out good, but he has to do it. Today.

  He looks up at the clock again, back to the TV.

  When the Beverly Hills show ends Uno gets up and walks over to the cupboard. He pulls out a tub of generic peanut butter and a package of saltines, fixes himself lunch. He eats it standing at the counter, occasionally looking up at the clock. Then he cleans up and sits back in front of the TV. A show comes on about cops busting people.

  Thirty minutes later, his mom finally comes in through the front door. He stands up, helps her with the bag of toiletries she’s taken from the hotel. “Hey, Ma!” he shouts after she walks into her bedroom to change. “Ma! Can I talk to you about something?”

  “Hang on, Uno!” she shouts back through the door.

  When she comes out she’s wearing her house pants and an old sweatshirt, the same outfit she always wears around the house.

  “Ma, can I talk to you?”

  “Hang on,” she says. “I got some news. Me and Ernesto’s havin’ a baby. I’m pregnant.”

  “What?” Uno follows his mom into the kitchen.

  She pulls a roll of paper towels from the plastic bag, a hand soap. “Found out yesterday afternoon. We had an appointment. Ernesto says this is gonna set us straight, and I think he’s right.”

  Uno stares back at his mom, trying to think. He says: “Congratulations.”

  His mom sets down a roll of toilet paper and gives him a big hug. Then she moves toward the fridge, pulls a package of ground beef from the freezer and sets it on a few folded paper towels. “If it’s a girl, we wanna name her Silvia. After your late grandmother. But if it’s a boy, Uno, get this. He’s gonna be Ernesto junior. Can you imagine how happy it’s gonna make Ernesto?”

  “That’s great, Ma.”

  She walks back into the living room and starts straightening the cushions, picking up old sports pages. As she cleans she tells Uno they hope the baby’s a boy so Ernesto can have a son of his own, but what really matters is having a healthy baby. When Uno asks her what about Manny, she says she means a son that’s not sick.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Uno says.

  She avoids Uno’s eyes, says: “You know what I’m talking about, Uno. We both love that boy. You know we do. But Manny’s not here. Ernesto wants a son with his own blood here. It’s nothing against you or Manny.” She pulls up all the curtains in a huff. Opens a couple windows. “Anyway, didn’t you have something to say?”

  Uno watches her walk back into the kitchen and put the stopper in the sink, start the water. Just as he opens his mouth to talk, she says: “Uno, take out the trash, honey. And wrap that hose up outside, it’s hangin’ all in the street. You know Ernesto gonna yell at you about that hose. He’s gonna be home in a couple hours.”

  Uno stands there nodding for a few seconds. He watches his mom pull out a few pots and pans for dinner. Then he turns and walks outside to deal with the hose.

  Along for the Ride

  1

  Danny only has twelve days until his mom’s supposed to come get him, and he still hasn’t booked his ticket to Mexico. But he can’t even think about that after what happened yesterday. He can’t get even the image out of his head. The hippie guy’s face, his uncle’s Bronco, the blood flying everywhere. He didn’t know anything about Uncle Ray until that second.

  He peeks out of his grandma’s bedroom window, sees Ray finally pulling into the driveway.

  Ray moves across the sidewalk, toward the house, without talking to anybody. He pulls Uncle Tommy into the sitting room outside Grandma’s bedroom, snaps his fingers for all the cousins to go find another place. It’s the third week of August and it’s crazy hot. Everywhere Danny looks somebody’s pulling clothing away from their sticky body. Wiping forehead sweat before it runs into their eyes.

  Vanessa and Sofia chase Grandma’s new kitten into the living room. Jesus sets down the remote and disappears. His kid brother, Little Mario, tugs at his diaper and just stands there. Nobody notices him at first until Cecilia reaches a hand in and pulls him out.

  “Somethin’ I gotta tell you,” Ray says, closing the door. He slips a hand in his pocket, pulls out his smoke pack. “Happened yesterday.”

  Danny’s crouched behind the door to his grandma’s bedroom, listening. He can only see his uncles’ faces through the crack, but by this point in the summer he knows everything that’s going on throughout the house. The different laughs coming from the yard. The women in the kitchen, making things with their hands. The smell of fresh tortillas and chile colorado. Mole sauce simmering in a pot on the stove. The baseball game on TV without sound, the radio tuned to a Spanish music station.

  More importantly, though, he knows every word his uncle Ray’s gonna say before he says it.

  Ray breaks up a bud, rolls the weed in a Zig-Zag and licks. He pulls a lighter from his pocket and, out of pure habit, cups a hand over the fire.

  2

  Danny had just finished scrubbing the tub with Sofia when Ray pulled up outside Tommy’s apartment. He waved to Sofia, came at Danny with some fake jabs and a left, wrestled him into a headlock. “Let’s go, D-man,” he said. “You comin’ shoppin’ with me for tomorrow.”

  Outside, his Bronco was idling, music thumping. He opened the back door and let Danny in, reintroduced him to his buddies. “You met Tim and Rico,” he said. He turned to them. “This my big brother’s kid right here. D-man.”

  They said what’s up and Rico led him through the whole hand-shaking thing.

  He settled in the backseat with Rico. Tim and Uncle Ray were up front. These were serious-looking dudes, the kind Uncle Ray always rolled with, and Danny was excited to be along for the ride.

  Rico jumped right in about how he got messed over by some woman he’d met in a bar. “Ol’ girl begs me to come home with her, right? Then she turns around and throws my ass in the street. What kinda sense does that make?” He threw his hands in the air.

  Uncle Ray peeped Rico in the rearview. “Come on, big Reek. Wha’chu do, man?” Ray shook his head, turned to Tim. “I know this pendejo had to did somethin’.”

  “Nah, I’m tellin’ you,” Rico said. “I didn’t do nothin’.”

  Tim spun around and faced Rico. “You gonna sit there and tell lies like that? Come on, Reek.”

  Rico wiped a hand down his face. “Man, I was just being straight with the broad.” He looked out his window, stared down a Mexican girl sitting in the passenger seat of a souped-up Civic. When the light turned green she sped ahead.

  “Ol’ girl asked me if I thought she was fat and I told her. I said, ‘Baby, I like my women thick.’ Told her, but if we was gonna get all technical about it, yeah, she could trim down a little in the abdominal region. I pinched a little roll of stomach fat to show her what I was talkin’ about.”

  The Bronco erupted in laughter.

  “That’s what’s up,” Rico said with a straight face. “I ain’t tryin’ to play games. Ol’ girl asks me a question, I’m gonna give her an answer. But then she gets all
crazy on me, right? Cussin’ and yellin’. And she throws my ass in the street. Don’t make no kinda sense.”

  Uncle Ray laughed hard, pounded the steering wheel.

  Tim spun halfway around and said: “D-man, you gotta understand about Reek. This pendejo’s always gettin’ thrown outta people’s house.”

  Danny laughed right along with everybody else. But then things turned on him.

  “What about the kid?” Rico said. “You said he go to private school, right, Ray? Your boy ever get slick with one of them uniform-wearin’ girls?”

  Uncle Ray said: “Yo, leave D alone, Reek. That’s my big brother’s kid.”

  Tim took Rico’s side. He put a hand on Ray’s shoulder, said: “Ain’t nothin’ but a question, Ray.” He spun around. “How old you anyway, little bro?”

  But Uncle Ray said: “Yo. I ain’t playin’.”

  Tim and Rico let up.

  Ray pulled into a Mexican shopping center across town. He and Danny bought all the meats and vegetables Grandma had written down on a piece of paper, and then they piled back into the Bronco. But as Ray was pulling out of the parking lot, a blur on a bike smacked Uncle Ray’s side mirror.

  “The hell was that?” Rico shouted, spinning around.

  Everybody peered out the back window, spotted this crazy, buffed-out hippie-looking dude sitting on a ten-speed, gazing back at the Bronco.

  “Oh, hell nah!” Rico shouted.

  “Who this white dude think he is?” Uncle Ray said, cranking the steering wheel around and hitting the gas.

  “Hell nah!” Rico said.

  Danny saw another car roll by slow. The driver turned to look.

  By the time Ray had the Bronco completely spun around, the ten-speed guy had ditched his wheels and was walking right down the middle of the road, toward Uncle Ray’s Bronco.

  3

  “Listen, brother,” Uncle Ray says to Tommy. “This pinche loco was coming straight for the truck. Musta been on PCP or somethin’.”

  Danny notices that Ray’s careful not to make too much eye contact with his brother as he speaks. He places the roach clip in the ashtray, lets the last embers burn out.

  Tommy runs a hand down his face. “What happened?”

  “I hit him, bro. Wasn’t goin’ fast or nothin’, but I ran him over.”

  Tommy drops his feet off the table and sits up. “Ray, man, you can’t keep—”

  “I know, brother,” Ray interrupts, standing up. “I’m only telling you ’cause Danny was in the car. We were just goin’ out to get the meat for today….” Ray turns his eyes on the brown rug, shakes his head.

  “Danny was in the car?” Tommy says.

  “I wanted to tell you—”

  “You hit somebody with Danny in the car?”

  Danny watches his uncle Ray reach for his cap.

  “What he tell us ’fore he went in there?” Tommy shouts.

  “Said he didn’t want Danny involved in any of this shit. None of it. You and me promised, Ray.”

  “I know,” Ray says. “It’s on me—”

  “Damn right it’s on you!” Tommy interrupts. He points to his own head. “You really that stupid, Ray?”

  Ray pulls on his cap, adjusts the bill.

  “I told Javi I’d have Sofe watch his back,” Uncle Tommy says through gritted teeth. “Didn’t know she had to check you.” Tommy stands up, and suddenly the two men are nose to nose.

  Danny sees the bulging vein in Tommy’s neck. The tightness in his mouth. But what stands out most is how much his uncle Ray looks like his dad. A younger version. He can really see it now.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Ray says, turning away.

  “That’s Javier’s boy!” Tommy yells, his finger almost poking Uncle Ray in the face.

  “Look,” Ray says, linking his fingers on top of his head, “I brought you in here to say I messed up. I know I did.”

  “You just like him, Ray. You don’t think.”

  “Where you think I learned all this shit from?”

  “Throw everything away if that’s what you want. I don’t give a shit anymore. But Javi made me promise to keep Danny away from this shit.” Tommy slugs the wall and Danny almost jumps out of his skin. “Goddamn it, Ray!” Tommy yells. “This shit’s gonna come down on me!”

  Tommy steps to Ray again.

  Ray backs up. “I messed up,” he says, reaching for his lighter. He looks up at Tommy again, slips the lighter in his pocket and leaves the room.

  Danny hears him rumble through his grandma’s place, fling open the door and slam it closed. Hears him do the same with the door of his Bronco, rev the engine and speed off down the road.

  His uncle leaves the sitting room, too, and Danny’s left alone, behind his grandma’s bedroom door. He’s not surprised at what Uncle Ray left out. He was expecting it. How could he have told the truth?

  Danny replays it all in his head again. The Bronco and the guy and the blood and the speeding away. He replays it the way he’s replayed it, over and over, literally hundreds of times, since it happened. But this time he tries to picture his dad at the wheel instead of Uncle Ray.

  4

  As the big hippie guy came walking down the middle of the road toward the Bronco, Tim was up front trying to talk Uncle Ray down. “Don’t do it, Ray,” he kept saying. “I know you, Ray. Don’t do it.”

  But Rico was in the back getting off on the whole thing. “Hit this chingado!” he yelled. “Run ’im over!”

  Ray hit the gas and ran smack into the guy, a nasty thumping sound against the hood. The guy’s head whipped all forward, and when Ray hit the brakes, he flew from the Bronco like a rag doll.

  “That’s right!” Rico yelled, pointing at the guy.

  Danny sat there, stunned. He stared at the guy’s body lying limp on the pavement. He looked at his uncle’s wild eyes in the rearview. But what he saw was his dad’s wild eyes. At the beach. In any fight with his mom.

  The hippie guy somehow pulled himself off the pavement and started walking toward the Bronco again.

  Everybody’s face went dead serious. “What the hell?” Tim said. “Que loco.”

  When the guy made it to the driver’s-side door he was breathing hard like a wild animal. He threw a right at Uncle Ray through the open window, but Uncle Ray ducked it, grabbed the guy by the arm and pulled him halfway into the cab and he and his boys started whaling on him.

  Danny’s heart climbed into his throat. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Blood was flying everywhere. It splattered all over the windshield and streaked down the steering wheel and pooled in the leather seats.

  Uncle Ray held the guy in a tight headlock while Rico and Tim pounded his face and torso. Rico smacked him in the same part of the face so many times, the sound of the blows actually changed. They became muted. Tim delivered blow after blow to the guy’s ribs and stomach.

  And the crazy thing was that Danny’s dad was there, too. Throwing punch after punch. Trying to kill the guy. His face mashed up in concentration. Danny saw him clear as day.

  The guy stopped flailing and went limp and Ray released his head so they could push him back out the window, onto the pavement.

  Blood was all over the place, on Danny’s face. His heart slammed the inside of his chest a hundred miles an hour. And everybody yelled things out at once: “Let’s go!” “Get outta here, Ray!” “Beat it!” “Come on, Ray!”

  But instead of speeding off, Uncle Ray flipped the Bronco into reverse and backed up. He turned the wheel slightly and pulled forward, ran over both the guy’s legs. Danny could actually hear and feel the bones crush and snap under the tires and he vomited into his own lap.

  The whole thing was so much like a movie. Only it wasn’t a movie. It was real. And everybody kept yelling things at the same time, making it hard to think. Danny’s heart pounded in his throat and he felt light. So light he had to grip his seat, hard as he could, so he wouldn’t float off somewhere.

  “Go, R
ay! Go!” Rico yelled, and Ray turned the Bronco around and pulled back into the street.

  Danny spun around and looked through the back window. The guy was completely still and covered in red. Lying in the middle of the street. He looked like a big dog that got hit by a car. But different from that, too. Not like a dog at all, in fact. It was like nothing he’d ever seen or had ever imagined.

  Uncle Ray slammed his foot on the gas and the Bronco sped down the empty road. His eyes looked psycho in the rearview mirror, full of rage. And then it was Danny’s dad’s eyes. Like the time at the beach with the white guy, his mom holding Julia and crying. Or on the freeway when somebody cut him off. Or at Danny’s Little League game when the ump made a bad call. Or in the parking lot when somebody snuck into his spot. And then it was somebody else in the mirror entirely. Somebody Danny didn’t even know.

  He turned to look back at the guy as Tim and Rico yelled stuff at each other and Ray drove. National City all around them. Closing in on them. He watched the guy’s body get smaller and smaller and smaller. Like when a kid lets go of a red balloon filled with helium and it climbs up into the sky, higher and higher. Or like a red car driving on the freeway when he used to stand on the bridge in Leucadia, watching. Moving further and further away with the rest of the cars.

  Danny kept looking back until the guy’s body became so small it disappeared completely. Until it became nothing more than a bloody image he knew would never leave his head.

  A Last Las Palmas Practice Session

  1

  Uno counts out loud as he and Danny finish the last couple push-ups of their third and final set. When they sit up he looks at Danny. There’s been something bothering his boy the past few days. He can tell.

  He clears his throat, says: “Hey, D, you wanna throw an extra round? Or you just wanna take off?”

  Danny shrugs, doesn’t make eye contact.

  Uno studies him for a few seconds. He wonders if the kid’s tired of this setup. Throwing pitches to a regular old catcher. He’s known all along that this is a temporary thing, that Danny would eventually move on to bigger and better things. But he didn’t realize it’d be this hard for him to say goodbye. Makes him feel kind of soft.