Post 4: Cowardly Sissy (Ch. 7, DCMJ)

Theme of internalized shame. With audio.

Chapter 7—Cowardly Sissy

A recording of me reading the excerpt:

After my older brother Ricky’s burial in 1977, my dad’s sisters, Tías Rosa and Ventura, went back home, to a now-empty house. Punished by God, too, I’d believe for years, in their case, for snatching away a mother’s son.

Tata drove back to our housing project unit with us from the burial but left that evening when Mom told him he wasn’t welcome in her house anymore. She had buried any lingering feelings for him when she buried her sixteen-year-old son. Tata was sober when she told him, so he didn’t resist. He shuffled out, staring straight ahead, his face lifeless, like that of a man who had died with his eyes open.

A couple of weeks later, Mom went back to work, back to cleaning white people’s houses. She had been working part-time since her baby, Jesse, had started kindergarten, landing her first jobs through house-cleaner friends in the neighborhood. My grandmother, Amá, pushed her to try to go on with her life: “Levántate. You can’t just lie in bed all day. Go to work. You have a lot of kids left to take care of and support.” A degree of denial also helped. She secretly harbored a hope that Ricky’s death had actually been some horrific nightmare. She half-believed she was still sleeping on the living room couch and would wake up soon to find her son still alive.

Mom took to stalking teenage boys who resembled Ricky. As they walked down the sidewalk with friends, she’d follow them in Bobby’s Buick, expecting to see Ricky’s face as soon as they turned around. The string of disappointments didn’t pierce the illusion. She remained convinced that eventually she’d catch Ricky strolling down the streets of Alpine.

Her denial held until a year after Ricky’s death, on the very anniversary of the accident. The night of the third of July, when Ricky failed to come by for early fireworks in our front quad, it hit her hard that he wouldn’t drop by our house ever again. Alone in her bedroom, she broke down. She sobbed and screamed so uncontrollably that my older brothers Bobby and Louie took her to the emergency room. They kept it from the rest of us, or at least from Tino, Jesse, and me. We were so distracted, popping firecrackers with the rest of our siblings, that we didn’t even realize they had driven off. But I remember them returning and Louie escorting Mom by the hand back into the house. The valium given to her at the hospital had taken effect. She looked like a zombie, her body stiff, her gait slow, her eyes wide and vacant.

“She just got a shot for her bad allergies,” Louie lied. As Bobby held the screen door open for them, he joked, “Make some room for the lovebirds!” We laughed and went back to our fireworks.

But that was a full year way. For the weeks following Ricky’s death, Tino, Jesse and I spent most of our time at home, watched by my sister Reyna during the week and doing chores with Mom on the weekend. Although I didn’t dare say it, I found life much more peaceful without Ricky. We didn’t have to go to Tías’ anymore, to Tía Ventura’s coldness and Tía Rosa’s constant scolding. (Jabs at what she considered Mom’s bad parenting skills, as Mom would eventually explain to me.) Nor did Ricky, who had betrayed our family by going to live with them the year before, drop by our house and take up all the air in the room with his macho banter. His absence from my very small birthday gathering in August, for my ninth birthday, made it a nice one, I noticed.

It also seemed that I was finally free of Tata. I started to believe that he’d never show up at our place again either. Until he did one final time, a week before I started the fourth grade.

Tata and Louie walked into the house together that Saturday morning. Fifteen then, Louie had just been released from Prude Ranch, the juvenile detention center in nearby Fort Davis, where he had served a stint for drug use and a string of thefts. He had been let out for a few days for Ricky’s funeral and, several weeks later, released for good.

Almost immediately after that, he ran away again and stole a car. But he had returned, thanks to Tata, who had bumped into him in town and convinced him somehow to come back home. Since they entered quietly through the back hallway, I didn’t realize either one of them was in the house, at first.

On the couch directly opposite the TV, I watched Bugs Bunny cartoons, with a clear view of the kitchen, where Mom wiped the green Formica counter with a damp, soapy washcloth. The overhead light reflected on the counter as she scraped off the encrusted food, the Spanish rice and beans, with her thumb’s long, unpolished fingernail.

I alternated between focusing on the TV screen and turning toward her when she made a comment—about the pile of dishes in the sink or a cleaning project that would involve all of us in a few minutes.

I had finally gotten lost in the cartoon when Tata’s slurred speech jerked my head back toward the kitchen. “I’m talking to you!” he suddenly yelled. I clutched the top of the crocheted cushion next to me.

Not looking at him or saying a word, Mom moved away, wiping the counter with wide circular motions. He wasn’t even worth her anger anymore, she seemed to say. Then Tata’s arms sprung upward and grabbed her by the neck. She shrieked, dropping the washcloth.

“Don’t you ignore me,” he growled.

“Let me go!” Mom screamed, digging her nails into his hands.

The image blurred. The noise in the house grew muffled. I turned toward the TV: splotches of darkness and fragmented animated images. A disconnect from my body. Then Wiley Coyote came into focus, outrun by the Roadrunner. A big boulder crashed down on his head. I heard myself laugh.

Her face red, Mom burst into the living room from the front hallway, forcing me out of my denial. She had freed herself, or Tata had released her. Her fist tightly against her belly, she swung her other arm, propelling herself through the living room and kitchen and disappearing into the back hallway. Then Tata tottered into the living room, stopping briefly to catch his balance. He lumbered into the kitchen, then disappeared into the back hallway too.

I was trembling uncontrollably now. Then I heard a smack. Mom panted. Tata grunted. He’s killing her, I knew. Mom screamed something I couldn’t make out. Something cracked. Once, twice, a third time. Louie yelled, “¡Mami!” Then the hallway went completely silent.

“Come on, Tata,” Louie finally said, “Let’s take you home.”

Tata grumbled something. The door slammed. And their feet clomped down the sidewalk.

Tata had left, but where was Mom? What had happened to her?

A drawer in her bedroom slid open and slammed shut. I heard sweeping. That had to be her.

I inched toward Mom’s bedroom, spotting her with the broom in her hand. I studied her face and arms as I approached, looking for signs that Tata had beaten her, but I didn’t see any.

Mom glanced up for a second, a fierceness in her eyes, then resumed her sweeping. Was she mad at me for not defending her? Did she have the urge to call me a jotín again?

I wanted to apologize but stared, instead, at the back-and-forth motion of the broom. In the hard-plastic encasement at the top half of the broom’s brush, a big vertical crack. It traveled all the way up to the neck of the broom. (That evening, when she’d talk openly about it with my older siblings, I’d learn she had broken the encasement bashing Tata on the head with the broom, right before Louie had jumped in. It had left a deep slash on Tata’s forehead.)

Mom didn’t look up at me. With an edge to her voice, she told me, “Go watch TV.”

Back in the living room, a different cartoon had started. I don’t remember what it was. I lay down on the couch, my knees bent, the crocheted cushion under my head. I was freezing, so I reached down and wrapped myself in the bedspread covering the couch. It didn’t help. I rubbed my legs, trying to warm up, to no avail. The cold emanated from some deep cavern inside me.

My eyes wandered from the TV screen to a picture on the wall of Mom as a young grade school kid. Short golden locks. Rouged cheeks. A long floral dress. A bright smile. No signs in the photo of what she was going through with her own parents.

She had told us that, an alcoholic like Tata, her father used to slap, punch, and kick her mother when he’d come home drunk at night. He’d put a knife to her throat and take her out to a nearby field to beat her some more. Amá would spend the rest of the night hovered over her kids’ potty chairs, filling the chamber pots with blood.

But at least Mom tried to stop Apá. Waking to sounds of the beatings, she’d jump out of bed and rush to find them. She’d pull on him, screaming at him to stop. Once, she intercepted a slap meant for Amá, which almost knocked her out cold, but the next night she was at it again. Another time, she struck Apá on the back with a bat.

How had she found the courage to do all of that? I wondered now. I was nothing like that. I was nothing like her.

I was too scared to try to stop Tata. So, he’d be back to finish the job, I was sure of it. And this time, Mom wouldn’t find a broom in her path. She wouldn’t even free herself from his grip around her neck. He’d tighten until she turned red, then purple, then white, until her body grew lifeless and limp. Then he’d release her, letting her thud against the cold linoleum. And I’d sit there paralyzed, watching the whole thing, dying along with her. Unable to stop Tata, incapable of even trying. Like the cowardly little faggot that I was.