Burro Genius

by Victor Villaseñor

  I was mad, and at school, I began getting mean. Instantly, I began winning at marbles once again. I’d wipe out whole pots, keeping all the marbles. Then a new girl came to school whose father was a minister. She was real pretty. Her name was Judy and she asked me and a good friend of mine named Dennis if we had any money. We both said that we did.

  “How’d you get your money?” she asked. “My parents won’t give me any, saying that money is the root of all evil.”

  “I get an allowance of fifty cents a week,” said Dennis.

  “I blackmail people,” I said.

  “Really? You blackmail people!” she said to me. “How do you do that?”

  “Well, first you need to find out about something that someone is trying to hide, or that they want to do without permission. Then you charge them to not tell on them.”

  Her eyes got big. She loved it.

  “Would you ever blackmail me?” asked Judy.

  “No, you got no money,” I said. “That’s another thing that I’ve found out. It’s not worth your time to blackmail people who have no money.”

  “That makes sense,” she said. Then she proposed something that I’d never thought of as a way of making money. “Look,” she said, “if you and Dennis meet me after school, I’ll pull up my dress and show you my underwear for five cents each.”

  “Okay,” said Dennis, anxiously.

  “Just wait,” I said, “what if Dennis and I pull down our pants and show you our underwear, then charge you five cents each.”

  She laughed. “But I don’t care about seeing your underwear,” she said. “I see my brother’s all the time, and it’s just plain white. But my underwear,” she added with a big grin, “is pink and has little flowers and you can see a lot of my legs and my belly button, too.”

  I didn’t like this one little bit! I thought it was totally unfair that we couldn’t get money for pulling down our pants. But I had to admit that getting to see her underwear did sound a lot more exciting than us showing her ours.

  Finally, Dennis and I agreed, and we met Judy down at the big eucalyptus trees behind the market that old man Hightower had just built. First, she took our nickels, before showing us anything, but then when she pulled up her dress, she’d only let us see the front part of her. I wanted to see the back of her underwear, too, but she said that to see the back of her underwear would cost us another nickel. I told her that I hadn’t brought any more nickels. She told me that I could bring my money tomorrow.

  That night, our mother didn’t come home from the hospital with our father. Our dad told my little sister Linda and me that our mother wouldn’t be coming home to eat dinner with us anymore. She would now be staying down in La Jolla day and night, either at the hospital or at a hotel where she’d rented a room down the street from Scripps. I began to cry. This was awful. My brother Joseph was really dying.

  The next day at school, Judy immediately wanted to know if I’d brought my other nickel so she could show me the back of her underwear after school. But I didn’t want to talk about money or underwear, so I told her to talk to her dad, that he was a minister so he had to have money. She told me that her father didn’t have money, that they were poor. Then Judy got a strange look in her eyes and began to stroke Dennis’s cheek. She told Dennis that maybe she wouldn’t even charge him anything to see her after school, if he became her boyfriend. Seeing this, I quickly spoke up. After all, Dennis was my friend.

  “Look,” I said, “whatever you do, don’t ever let her get on top, because if you do, then you’ll get all embarrassed and angry if people find out that you were on the bottom.”

  “The bottom of what?” asked Dennis.

  “The bottom of her,” I said, “and her on top of you like a rooster does to a chicken, going up and down.”

  “Really,” said the minister’s daughter, “guys get embarrassed and angry if the girl’s on top?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling proud that I knew so much. “I saw it happen once with my—I can’t tell you with who, but it’s true.”

  “Did you blackmail them?” asked Judy.

  “Yes.”

  “Really. How much did you get?”

  “A dollar,” I said.

  “A whole dollar!” she yelped. “Wow! How can I get into this blackmail, too?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Look, you show my boyfriend Dennis and me how to do blackmail,” she said, “and I’ll even let you touch me.”

  “Where?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  They both started laughing so much that I got mad and didn’t meet with them after school. I wanted to get home to find out how my brother Joseph was doing. I wanted to ask my dad if I could go down to Scripps with him and see my brother. But that night, when our dad got home, my little sister and I could both see that he was in no mood to talk. He smelled of whiskey. We ate in silence at the dinner table that night while Rosa served us. I could just feel it; things were really getting bad for my brother Joseph. That night I prayed for God to please spare my brother’s life, just as I’d heard my mother pray so many times in the last year.

  The next day at school, Judy and Dennis met with me at recess. All they wanted to know was how they could get into my blackmail business. But no matter how much I explained to them that it was better for them to start their own—because I was blackmailing my own family—they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “Look,” I finally said, trying to get rid of them, “just snoop around here on the teachers and find them doing something they shouldn’t be doing, so you can blackmail them.”

  A few days later, Dennis and Judy came to me all excited and said they’d kept their eyes open, and yesterday they’d followed the fourth-grade teacher, the youngest teacher at our whole school, and they’d seen her meet someone by that little cemetery just south of school over looking the duck lagoon between Oceanside and Carlsbad.

  “They were holding hands,” said Judy all excited, “and walking around the graves. They kissed next to one grave!” she added.

  “So how much do you think we should ask her for?” asked Dennis.

  “Were they glancing around like they were afraid of somebody seeing them?” I asked.

  “No, not that I could see,” said Dennis.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t think you have enough.”

  “But they were really kissing, and next to a grave!” said Judy. “So that has to be worth something.”

  “Not if they’re married,” I said, “or boyfriend and girlfriend. Just holding hands and kissing isn’t going to get you any money. You see, for blackmail to really work, the people got to be real scared of somebody finding out what they’ve done. That’s how the priest works it at church. He gets everybody feeling real bad about what they’ve done all week, then he scares the sssh—I mean, the crap out of them with hell and damnation, and this is when people pull their money out of their pockets and put it in the basket. Ask your dad,” I said to Judy, “I bet he’s really good at blackmailing people into giving him money on Sundays.”

  “No, he isn’t,” she said, “like I told you, we’re poor.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Maybe you should spy on your dad. Because our priest at Saint Mary’s in Oceanside, he’s old, but he sure knows how to scare the ssh—I mean, the crap out of people, and get them to give money on Sunday and even pay for masses, too.”

  “You don’t have to say ‘crap’ because of me,” Judy said. “You can say ‘shit,’ if shit is what you really want to say.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Why not? I say all the bad words I can when my dad isn’t around. And my mom says some, too, when he isn’t listening to her.”

  “I’ll be damned—I mean, blessed. No, I mean damn, DAMN, DAMN,” I said. And why shouldn’t I say “damn” instead of “blessed?” I said to myself.

  Chavaboy was getting worse every day.

  At ho
me our silent dinners continued and our dad just seemed to be getting worse and worse with the smell of whiskey. Our mother hadn’t been home in a week, and Linda and I missed her so much.

  I began lighting the candles at my mother’s little altar just outside my parents’ bedroom and I had Linda kneel down with me so that we could pray together for our brother and mother, too. The candles would flicker in the hallway darkness and I swear that I’d sometimes see something move out of the corner of my eye, but it didn’t scare me. I knew who it was. We weren’t alone. Jesus was here with my sister and me, praying, too.

  And at school, no matter what I’d say, I couldn’t get Dennis and Judy to talk about anything but money and blackmail. Still, they just couldn’t seem to get enough on anyone so they could get them to pay. Yet they kept trying, and who could blame them, especially Judy, who was always so broke that she couldn’t even buy herself a piece of candy if she wanted one.

  Once Judy and Dennis and I went into Hightower’s Market and Judy told me to go up to old man Hightower and ask him if he had Prince Albert in a can, while she and Dennis checked some things out in the back of the store. I went up to Mr. Hightower and asked if he had Prince Albert in a can. He said sure, reaching behind himself and getting this greenish-looking can of tobacco.

  “But you have to get your father to come to buy it,” he said.

  Just then, Judy and Dennis came running by me, yelling for Mr. Hightower to let poor Prince Albert out of the can, and they ran out the front door.

  Mr. Hightower got mad.

  I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I took off, too. Getting on my bike, I was able to catch up with Judy and Dennis down by Buccaneer Beach. They were laughing and laughing and they had all these candy bars and little sacks of peanuts and Fritos. Suddenly, I realized that they’d sent me to talk to Mr. Hightower so they could steal these things from the back of the store. I was shocked. But they didn’t seem upset and offered me a candy bar, saying that it had been great freeing Prince Albert from captivity.

  When I told them that stealing was wrong, they just laughed and asked me, what did I think blackmail was, God’s work? Hearing this, I got an icy-bad feeling. Maybe God was punishing my brother for all the horrible things that I was doing in my life. My mother was right. God was taking Joseph away from us because we were such a bad, horrible, no-good familia!

  I began to cry, but didn’t want Judy and Dennis to see me crying, so I got on my bike and pedaled home as fast as I could. That night, our dad didn’t come home in time for dinner, so Linda and I ate dinner with Rosa and Emilio and their little boy, Carlitos. It was good to hear people talk and laugh at the dinner table again. Our dad did get home in time to put us to bed. But he didn’t know how to sing us to sleep or rub our foreheads real good like our mother. Also, his eyes looked all red and he smelled terrible.

  The next day at school, Dennis and I were playing marbles with the guys when Judy came up. She was all upset. I could see it in her eyes, but she wouldn’t tell us what had happened. All I knew was that lately, she’d begun to spy on her own father, so she could get him to give her an allowance. But he wouldn’t because he kept telling her that money was the root of all evil. Hell, I’d been told the opposite by my dad. He’d told me that being penniless was the root of all evil, and any fool who didn’t know this just hadn’t lived through starvation.

  That same day after school, I saw Judy looking so brokenhearted that I gave her a dollar. “And you don’t have to show me nothing,” I said to her. “I’m giving you this money because I like you, and you’re my friend, Judy.”

  Hearing this, she took the dollar, looked at me in the eyes, then gave me a great big hug and a kiss on the cheek, too, but not the way she kissed her boyfriend Dennis. Boy, it felt good! It was the first kiss that I’d ever gotten from a girl who wasn’t a relative.

  A few days later, I could smell something really wrong the moment I walked out of the classroom. The school grounds were empty. Once again, I was being kept after school every day, so my teacher could try and teach me how to read before the end of the year.

  I was walking quickly across the empty asphalt to get my Schwinn, so I could go home. This was when I saw three guys come out from behind a small pepper tree. My heart started pounding. Something was really wrong, I could smell it. These guys weren’t my friends. But of course, I knew them all. Two were in my present third-grade class and one was in the fourth grade, in the same classroom that I’d been in before I’d flunked.

  They circled around me. They had funny little grins on their faces, but I couldn’t figure out what it was that they wanted. Then it hit me, they were probably mad at me for winning at marbles so much lately. But before I could say anything, they all rushed at me, and began hitting me as hard as they could.

  I was so shocked that I didn’t hit back at first, but then one boy said something about me being a Mexican, and hearing this, I got real mad, and started hitting back with all my might, and kicking, too!

  And when they knocked me to the ground and I saw I didn’t have a chance, I started grabbing and pulling them to me and biting them as hard as I could, just like a wild dog. This was when the screaming started and they got off of me as fast as they could.

  I got back on my feet, too. “I WON THOSE MARBLES FAIR AND SQUARE!” I yelled. “You’re just sore losers!”

  “You bit me!” said one boy, crying. “I’m bleeding, you stupid Mexican! Don’t you know teeth carry disease!”

  “What was I supposed to do! You guys started it!”

  “No, we didn’t!” said another. “You did it! It’s all your fault! Next year more Mexicans are coming to our school because of you! Why don’t you people all stay in Pas-ol-eee Town where you belong!”

  I was all confused. I’d thought that this was about me winning at marbles. “You mean you guys want to beat me up because other Mexicans are coming to this school next year?”

  “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT!” yelled one kid. He was new. “I’m from Texas! And my pa told me that we got to put you all in your place! That he don’t care how big your father’s hacienda is, you’re still a damn, worthless, chile belly greaser!” Then he said, just like Gus had, “Remember the Alamo!”

  All the blood left my face. Suddenly, all these flashes of Ramón and us kids getting beat up by the teachers and other kids at that other school across town came rushing to my mind. Was God also punishing me for being Mexican? I began to cry. Maybe this was really what it was all about? Maybe this was what my mother had meant when she’d told my dad that God was punishing Joseph for their sins, the sins of us all being Mexicanos. If this was true, then my tía Tota was right to say that she was glad she’d never had any kids. After all, we Mexicans were no good people, so it was wrong for us to have kids. I got on my bike and went home crying.

  But I can tell you, all that didn’t shock me as much as the next day when I came out of the classroom to get on my Schwinn and there was Dennis, my best friend, and he, too, was with these other three guys waiting to beat me up.

  Well, this time, when they started circling me, I didn’t wait for them to jump me. Feeling SO-O-O BETRAYED seeing Dennis with them, I attacked the way my dad had told me he’d attacked a desert tiger that had been getting ready to leap on him when he’d been a little kid back in old Mexico.

  I raised up my arms and SCREAMED at the top of my lungs, startling them, hitting the biggest guy who was a fourth grader in the nose as hard as I could. Then I grabbed the next biggest kid from Texas, and yanked him to me, and bit him in the face. These two were now screaming as I was hitting the other two. They now all took off running, and I screamed and screamed at them. “Come back! COME BACK! I’LL FIGHT! I’LL FIGHT, cabrones! REMEMBER THE ALAMO!”

  Hell, I didn’t even know what the Alamo was, but it had felt good to yell this. But I never really hit Dennis too hard, even though he took a few swings at me, because I could see that he wasn’t really into hurting me. In fact, it was easy for me to see
that he’d felt ashamed.

  The following day, it got even worse. Once more the school grounds were empty by the time I came out of my extra half hour of reading, and I was a sitting duck. This time there were five guys waiting for me and their smell of wanting a fight was really strong. Two of them were great big guys whom I didn’t know, so I figured that they were maybe even fifth graders.

  They hurt me real bad this afternoon. They kept kicking me once they got me down. In the end, I’d hit and scratched and bit so much that all five boys backed away from me, not wanting to fight me anymore.

  I’d held my own. I hadn’t backed down. But you wouldn’t know it by the way I looked and felt. I couldn’t even raise my arms high enough to get on my bike to ride home, I was in so much pain. And my head was all dizzy from the kicking. I then remembered, like in a foggy far away dream, that my brother had gotten his sickness from a football injury. I wondered if I, too, was now going to end up at Scripps.

  I cried all the way home once again. It wasn’t my fault that I’d been born a Mexican and that other Mexicans were coming to school next year.

  “God,” I said, “why did you even create any Mexicans or Blacks, if we’re all such bad, no good people? Eh, You tell me that.”

  I had to stop and rest several times before I could make it home, I was so beaten up. I felt much better once I got to the gates of our rancho grande. I was home. This was our place, our world, our reservation. And here everyone spoke Spanish. So maybe here it was okay to be un Mexicano.

  That night our dad didn’t come back from La Jolla. He called to say that he was staying overnight with our mother to keep her and our brother company. Rosa and Emilio attended to my wounds, wrapped my ribs, and lit candles and prayed for the Virgin Mary to protect me when I told them what had happened.

  Emilio then told me how he’d also been beaten by the cops in Texas when he’d complained that his boss wouldn’t pay him. I said an extra prayer, asking for Ramón and the other guys from Pozole Town to please come and help me at this school in South Oceanside because I just couldn’t keep doing it alone another day. Tomorrow they’d be sure to kill me.