One night, we had a six-pack between us, and his legs on my stomach, which should’ve been awkward for us. We weren’t even fooling with English by then. I was filling in his blanks.
Te amo, I said.
Te amo.
Nice. Good. Te amo.
Te amo.
Right.
Sí.
I laughed in his face, told him to say it again.
I dumped garbage all day, taught my whiteboy at night.
This is how things happen. Even for us.
5.
A few weeks later, he got the promotion.
His supervisor said it wasn’t like he was a natural. But out of all the whiteboys they had on hand, he was the closest to whatever they needed.
A position had opened up out in Dallas, if he wanted it. He had a few days to decide.
Of course we had to celebrate. We sat at his table, sober for once, and I told him that was great. He’d probably enjoy himself.
He made this face like that was the wrong response.
I knew what he’d ask, and I answered before he said it.
The whiteboy said I knew I could come too, come with him, and I told him I did.
The whiteboy said this was it, what we’d been working toward, and I told him it may have been.
The whiteboy said there was nothing left for me in Houston, he said that I didn’t have to punish myself, and he said my name, my actual name, and I didn’t have the words for that.
I stretched my cheeks as far as they’d go. Put a hand on his thigh.
I grabbed my socks and my cap and my belt and I left and he did not put up a fight.
This is how easy it is to walk out of a life. I’d always wondered, and now I knew.
I didn’t see him before he took off.
Who knows what he’s doing now.
6.
But a week or two later, I was working the night shift, scrubbing blood off the floor, when one of my managers asked for a word.
I’d already decided to put him in the dirt if he touched me. Someone, somewhere in Houston needed a fry cook. I’d twirl signs on the street. Dance on the curb in a phone suit.
He put his hand on my shoulder, and I clinched for the punch.
He told me they’d fired a couple of fatheads for pocketing tips. He called them idiot cabrones, as if he weren’t one himself.
But we need a guy who has experience, he said.
We’d start you slow, he said. Behind the stove. Work you up from the bottom.
You’re asking me to cook for you, I said, and he shrugged, said, If that’s what you want to call it.
I’m asking you to do yourself a solid, he said.
And if this were a different story, a story about something else, a story where we did the things we know we need to do, I’d have smiled real wide, the same as with the whiteboy, and with a little more feeling, or maybe a different one entirely. But I just put my hand on his shoulder, and I squeezed around the edges, and I loudly, gracefully, told him to go fuck his mother.
PEGGY PARK
Micah turned pro and the rest of us went regular. Games started at ten past four. Sometimes we’d fuck around and wait an extra fifteen, if the rain on Scott was heavy enough to slow the rails downtown, and that’s where our guys pulled up from, or at least the niggas you wanted on base, since of course the neighborhood’s got idle feet all over but mostly we were too fucked-up or too strung out or too in our feelings, or too busy scrapping in the parking lots on Wheeler, or groping each other in the garages downtown, and if you weren’t already there then you were on your way but for an hour or three on Wednesday nights we were present, clear in the moment.
Jacoby manned the upper outfield. Now he’s a mechanic or some shit. The bat was too heavy for Lenny and today he’s a drunk holding court on Westheimer. Kendall threw, caught, and tagged, then he had a son at seventeen, and then he slit his wrists over custody when he divorced like fourteen years later. On the other side of the pitch, Matthew reffed on his hands and knees, before they threw him in juvie, before they threw him in rehab, before they threw him who the fuck knows where. Abel had a sick hit on him—he works at Shell most nights after six—but, back then, on our glass-tattered field, he was almost subpar at best. LaMarcus threw the ball like a murderer, he’d nail you right in your fucking eye, or maybe that one spot in your knee, or else mid-stride, full speed, just square in the balls; but now that motherfucker’s a gardener with this boyfriend out in the Heights. Stefan’s a faggot too, only he’d told us right from the jump. Tommy Lee pulled home runs from his ass on the regular, but lately he’s been manning this pawnshop with his sister; and the sister, her name was Passion, she actually peeped us from the stands, and we catcalled at her, said give us something to grab at, we dropped our shorts and stuck out our tongues and took the sight of her bugging back home, terrified the whole time, because who knew what she’d do with us; and one day we’d been talking shit on the grass when she grabbed Abel’s bat and knocked a pitch square out the block, right through our hands, she ran those bases like a motherfucker, and now she’s got a kid with some Vietnamese cat in Bellaire. Demetrius Quinto was no good for catching, and no good for hitting, just trash at movement in general, until one day we had him bunting and he couldn’t do that either and now he runs a parlor on the corner of Montrose. Colby could hit, but then he went and got strung out. Donny hit the pipe. Nelly hit it too. Paco held third base, the only Mexican in the neighborhood, we called him Big Mac since his folks held court at McDonald’s like seven days a week, and he was the other guy who made it out, got a free ride to Stanford, and then overseas, to make it back a decade later with a PhD and all the clout in the world. Jonathan and Jaycee were reliable benchers, and Juicy was the only brother among them who did time. Ivan did time. Connor did time. Bailey and Raymond and Kool-Ray did time.
There was one night, just after Harvey, and the streets were all the way flooded, and you couldn’t run the bases for shit, let alone wade through the dirt, but, even still, we all knew our steps, it felt primal, like birth, like this shit we just knew how to do, and our toes grazed the asphalt and our legs took us through it, and that night Micah rounded the bases like a dog before he finally got his ankle stuck in a pothole by the fence. Dude fell sideways. Like a block of burnt wood. Screaming like I don’t know what. So Tommy grabbed his fingers, and Criss-Cross grabbed Tommy, and Dawson held Quinto, and Kendall tugged Dawson. John tagged on to Jaycee, and I grabbed Juicy by his hips, and his Nikes wouldn’t budge until Passion grabbed my belt, yanking at my waist, tearing at the seams; and Kool-Aid pulled Passion, and Dawson budged Kool-Aid, and Micah flew out of that hole. You’d think the motherfucker would’ve thanked us, would’ve looked us in the eyes, would’ve at least mumbled something with some semblance of gratitude, but what he did was take off and clear the rest of those bases. Ran through his shoes. His socks. He dove into the mass of us. And we let him do that, we let him take us to the mound. He carried us through the water, and the mud, all the way back home, and that might be why he’s the one playing in Brooklyn and Boston and Pittsburgh and Dallas and Tucson and Cleveland and Oakland, but when you catch him on ESPN, or FOX Sports SW, or Telemundo 40, or wherever the fuck, then we’re right there with him, holding him up, pushing him toward wherever we’re headed next.
FANNIN
Everything is different now, but for a while I lived off of Fannin. Yolanda and I rented this piss-yellow walk-up. It’s still behind the fire station, right before the bars. We both worked at the museum downtown; it was my third or fourth job since I’d left the restaurant. One morning we were driving back drunk from the clubs when I saw my father walking up the side of the road.
It was two or three past midnight. We hadn’t had any luck at Liberty Station or Julep’s. Just the usual goons looking for ass on a Sunday, although it would be a few more years before I stopped looking myself
. Yo was driving, and I said, Stop, please stop, and she said, Jan, fuck, you’re crazy, just wild, but it’s cool, some weekends you win and some weekends you don’t, no reason to lower the bar for these niggas. Yo was talking about some other fucking thing, about me not having a man, or having them and losing them, but I didn’t care about that, not really. Didn’t. Don’t. So I reached for the steering wheel, a little fucked-up, a little high, and Yo finally opened her eyes when she realized I was serious, and she stomped on the brakes, and we both sort of flew.
Any further down the road and we would’ve hit the tracks. Yo’s car slowed a bit by Margaritas to Go. She told me to cool it, to calm the fuck down, so I inhaled a bit. Cooled it. Calmed down. I looked back at the man on the road, because of course sometimes people see things. Your eyes will show you what they want to, or whatever they think you should see. They’ll show you a happy family when all you have is bodies in a room. They’ll show you a man worth walking out on your whole fucking life for, a man who will leave you with three kids and a half-rotting lot, but because your eyes are your eyes and you know what you know, you won’t see the train until it finally hits you.
That’s him, I said.
Who? said Yo.
My father, I said, and Yo blinked before she laughed.
Yo used to share her apartment with some guy, but then the guy moved out and I filled in the rest of the rent. Most nights we’d hit the Heights, or we’d dance with the gays in Montrose. We’d take shots downtown. We’d strut through the Galleria. No matter where we went, everyone thought we were supposed to be there. The whiteboys I found in Midtown didn’t know my brother sold smoke. The Filipinos from the Medical District didn’t know my mother couldn’t cope. I had an Afghani guy once, his fingers felt like chocolate, for a minute I lived with him in this hotel room on the ninth floor of Zaza, but then his visa went up and he had to fly back home, and he asked to take me with him, actually offered to fly me back, and he didn’t know my other brother sucked more dick than the peddlers on Waugh, or that my mother spent whole months crying because of it.
No one knew these things. What I didn’t do was tell them. It took me a while to figure out that we’re only who we allow ourselves to be.
Eventually I’d marry a whiteboy. A doofy guy who treats me well. We have a kid, an angel, and another one on the way. I say it’ll be my last child, but I know he wants another, and I want him to want things. I actually like that. But, at one point in my life, I wouldn’t have looked at my husband twice. Or I would have, three times. I would have laughed in his face.
My father had on these tattered khakis. Boots with holes in the heels. I opened the door with Yo screaming her lungs out behind me. He sped up when he saw me coming, then he looked again, and then he was running, but this happened back when I was light, the lightest I’d ever been, no mother, no brothers, no one to hold me back.
I walked my father down and grabbed him by the shoulders.
Hey, I said, pulling at his jacket.
Look at me, I said.
Hey, I said.
My father smelled like trash. He swept at my hands. Filthy hair. Slumped shoulders. His fingers cracked like firewood.
Yo was the only one who knew where I came from. I told her about my brothers, and our home above the kitchen. I’d tell her how Javi essentially ran a brothel out of his bedroom, or how, some nights, my mother woke up just to sit at the dinner table.
Yo would brush her bangs. She’d whistle real low. Say, Weren’t you and I lucky to make it out of the crazy?
But, the thing is, it was never really that bad. Or it was bad, fucking horrible, and what I did was deal. Some nights, way later, I’d sit on the rooftop of some bar, with Houston’s swampy air and a beer, and a brass band playing, and some fuck paying my tab, and I’d think, okay, this is it. This was worth all of that shit. Javi and the rest of them. It happened, but I’m here—and where are they? I could not even tell you. And, believe it or not, these evenings weren’t far and few between. They were like mosquitoes. I’d miss them for patches, but not too long. I couldn’t get enough.
My father said my name once, and then once again, and then I realized it was Yo pulling at both of my shoulders.
She settled behind me, kneeling on the asphalt. She stared at my father. He looked at me. I looked at Yo, and then the man beneath me, and he blinked at the two of us.
Jesus fuck, he said.
What the shit, he said.
She’s sorry, said Yo. She’s so fucking sorry.
And I said it, too.
I really tried to mean it.
But I wasn’t sorry, because it was my father.
Maybe just for a second. Maybe he was there and then he was gone. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t there at all.
In the car back home, Yolanda didn’t say much about it.
Happens to the best of us, she said, pulling at her hair.
She said, Did I tell you about Lamar?
He had me running in circles, too, said Yo. Chasing niggas into the street.
But one day you just get tired, said Yo. You end up just done with all that.
* * *
• • •
I don’t think I need to tell you that nothing like that ever happened again. We moved out of the piss apartment a few months later. Yo found a new job, and I pulled a promotion at the gallery, and eventually it just became easier to find our own spaces across town.
Now, Yo’s gone. In Austin with some man from Malaysia. We talk on the phone from time to time. She asks how I’m doing, if I’m really okay.
A few years later I met my husband at the museum, this other museum, and not because he bought me a drink or pulled my number from a hat. He just showed up. Then he kept on doing that. He bought a ticket every day, and then one day he asked me out. If you’d told me that this could happen to someone like me, I would have called you a liar, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong. I’m still learning. Still picking things up.
When I told my mother we were getting married, she didn’t say a thing. She just looked at me for a long, long time.
The next time I saw her, she asked me why I hadn’t asked for her approval, and I actually laughed. It was the first time I’d seen her in months. I wasn’t in the habit of checking in, and when my younger brother saw us in the kitchen, he scowled.
Figures, said Ma.
I’m not even surprised, she said.
Then she said, At least one of you is doing it right.
She looked me in the face, and said, The thing about slow learners is that they eventually do learn.
And there was a lot in that. Another sentence behind it. Something I knew that, if she told me, I would never forget. But before she could open up and give me whatever it was, the bell dinged down by the restaurant’s register, my brother had let someone in, and my mother gave me one last look before she disappeared, and that was it, more or less, the conversation was gone.
WAUGH
Poke lived in a one-bedroom with five boys and a window. The complex sat on Montrose, just across from St. Thomas. They rented it from a woman who couldn’t be bothered with a lease, or regular maintenance, or even a deposit; Rod had talked her down so that she wouldn’t raise the charges on them. Rod was the one who spent the least time fucking around. He was always out tricking. Most of them were. But, on the rare mornings Poke awoke on the fading carpet of the room, he could watch crowds from the chapel drifting up the block. The apartment sat next to the Chevron on Richmond and the pharmacy on Yoakum, with the diner in between, and Poke would hover by the window, humming at the sink, willing the tap into something a little nicer.
Usually he was cleaning up from last night’s john. Poke tried to keep things local. It made life easier. Most guys were fine getting jerked off in their cars, or driving Poke and the other boys a block from the bars on Fairview—but other
s insisted that they had to be comfortable, and these were the ones who took Poke home with them.
Although, once, Poke ended up at Memorial Hermann. He’d been sucking off some doctor and the doctor was on call. The doc’s pager went off, and he wouldn’t leave Poke at his place, so he drove him to the hospital and stuck him in the waiting room. Poke sat beside a pair of bleached blondes waiting for painkillers, three bespectacled Mexican women, and some whiteboy with his head in a bandage. The whiteboy looked broken, and he slumped beside his girlfriend, but even through the gauze he was the only one who stared.
When Poke finally asked what’d happened to his face, the whiteboy’s girl grabbed her guy by the shoulders.
The whiteboy said he’d been cooking and he poked himself.
Poke smiled, but he didn’t laugh.
* * *
• • •
The other boys Poke lived with were fine: Scratch and Google and Knock and Nacho. They worked the same bars, the same apps, hustled the same set of clubs. They looked out for one another well enough—like when Google’d told Poke about dragging his heels, so he wouldn’t track shit from the street into a john’s house; or when Nacho’d advised, after staring for months, that Poke find himself a shirt that didn’t scream pato.
But it was Rod who’d given Poke his crew’s rules of engagement: don’t do anything you wouldn’t do twice; never, ever, ever double-wrap your rubbers; never give your government name, find some shit that’s cool on the ears, and when Poke told Rod that he didn’t really get that since his name was his name and it’s what he was called, Rod christened Poke as Poke.
That’s what got you a regular, Rod said. You established patterns. Patterns became routines. Routines meant a sure buck most days of the month, and that’s what kept the lights on.
Lot Page 11
