Muchacho (11 page)

T.J. grinned at me like a maniac for a second and then kept on drawing dog shit until the whole page was covered with it. Then he handed me my notebook and stood up and walked right out the front door of the school even though his mother was still inside talking. None of the secretaries said anything. They just watched him go out the door and down the sidewalk and across the street. He kept right on walking until he finally disappeared.

L
UPE’S FATHER HAS EYES LIKE A BULLFIGHTER, REAL SHINY AND
hard, so you know he could just stand there until the very last second and then stick a knife in your neck right when you thought you were winning. No wonder Lupe is so strong, with a father like that. The first time I met Mr. Garcia, he didn’t look at me with hard eyes because he didn’t hate me yet. But he looked me over real good so I would know I would only get one chance with him so I better not mess it up. But I did. I messed it up big. Now Lupe isn’t even allowed to talk to me because I’m a negative influence over her. I’m probably the most negative influence she ever had because nobody else ever made her get arrested before.

If we still had sex ed in school like they used to, probably
the whole thing wouldn’t have even happened. Primo says they used to teach stuff that you could do besides you-know-what so nobody would get pregnant or get a disease, and they used to give out free condoms, too. But now we just have abstinence, so everybody just does what comes naturally. I was willing to take my chances but Lupe wasn’t and it was making me
loco
until Jaime and his girlfriend took too many chances. Then I was glad that Lupe is the boss of us sometimes and makes me listen to her or else.

Jaime bought some birth control pills from T.J. Ritchie, except they turned out to be baby aspirins. Lena freaked out and said they had to go to Planned Parenthood right away but Jaime doesn’t have a driver’s license. His father took it away after Jaime got busted trying to get into a nightclub in El Paso with his father’s ID. So Jaime asked me would I take him. Papi already took away my car and sold it and gave me that stupid bicycle that I never ride, so I told Papi I had a job interview right after school and he let me borrow his car. Jaime said to just let him take the car, but I’m not that stupid. I didn’t really want to go because I stopped cutting classes and I been trying to bring up my grades so Lupe won’t be ashamed of having a dumb boyfriend. But Jaime and me have been friends since first grade and he always has my back, so I had to help him out. We made a plan to cut out right before lunch so we could be back in time for sixth period.

I knew I shouldn’t have let Lupe come with us but my brain isn’t my biggest body part when she’s around, if you
know what I mean. When Lupe found out about the plan, she said she was going, too, because Lena needed another girl to sit with her. I said no, and she said yes, and I said no, and Lupe put her hands on her hips and I gave up because when a woman puts her hands on her hips, if you don’t give her what she wants, you’ll be sorry.

Everything would have been just fine because Lena wasn’t pregnant, but I got filled with lust and let Jaime drive back to school so I could sit in the backseat with Lupe. Lena wasn’t in the mood to even talk to Jaime, so I figured why waste the backseat on two people who didn’t even want to hold hands. Lena cried all the way back to school and it made Jaime so nervous that he crashed the car. We almost made it, but he drove right into the back of a big black SUV about two blocks from school. This old Anglo guy was driving, so you know he has insurance and he quick called the cops. If it would have been a Mexican car, we could have probably just gave the guy some money because
mi primo
Octavio can do any kind of bodywork you need and you can’t even tell the car was crashed after he gets done.

Mr. Garcia got there even before the police and as soon as he saw nobody got hurt, he said, “Eduardo, why don’t we take a little walk?” It wasn’t a real question because he already had his arm around my shoulder. We walked about fifty feet and then Mr. Garcia stopped and said, “Look at my daughter.” Lupe was still standing by the smashed-up cars talking to the police who was Sgt. Cabrera, that lady cop who came to
Beecher’s class and I had to be the escort. When the cop car pulled up and I saw who was driving, I was hoping Sgt. Cabrera wouldn’t remember me, but as soon as she got out of the car, she said, “Yo, Eddie. How’d you like that book?”

After I escorted her, Sgt. Cabrera sent me that book she was talking about,
The Four Agreements
, except I never read it. I just put it in the back of the little drawer where I keep my socks and forgot about it, but I told her it was real good and thanks for sending it to me.

Sgt. Cabrera shook her head but she didn’t call me a liar. Instead, she said, “You don’t read that book here,” and she pointed to her head. “You read it here.” She put her hand on her heart like saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Then she stopped being friendly because she had to arrest me and call my parents.

I was glad Mr. Garcia got there first because other people’s parents never yell at you as loud as your own parents do. When I saw his face, I thought Mr. Garcia might punch me, but instead he said let’s take a little walk, so we did. “Look at my beautiful daughter,” he said again. We both looked at Lupe. I nodded because I couldn’t say anything because Lupe is so beautiful it can make you cry.

“She’s not just beautiful,” Mr. Garcia said. “She’s gifted and talented and she is going to make something big out of her life.” Usually it’s the mothers who say that kind of stuff and usually you think, Yeah, right, keep dreaming, lady, but Mr. Garcia wasn’t dreaming. Lupe is so smart and
hermosa
that she sparkles and her father is so proud he shines from it, and I am the kind of kid who is so stupid he makes his father almost get a heart attack and makes his mother cross herself and whisper
“Madre de Dios
” about twenty times a day.

“Lupe deserves a man she can respect,” Mr. Garcia said, “a man I can respect,” and he poked his finger into his chest which must be pretty hard because it sounded like he was knocking on wood. So when Mr. Garcia said he thought it would be a good idea if Lupe didn’t see me for a while except in school, I didn’t argue with him. Besides, I knew I would probably be grounded forever anyways after Papi got there.

Me and Mr. Garcia were still about twenty feet away but I could hear Papi yelling on the phone when Sgt. Cabrera called him. I was thinking how embarrassed I would be when he showed up and started yelling at me in front of everybody, but he didn’t even yell. He rode up on that stupid bicycle he bought me after he took away my car and just got off the bike and let it fall on the ground. Then he snapped his fingers at me and pointed to the bike so I knew I wasn’t riding home in his car.

When I finally got home, my gym bag and a little suitcase were sitting on the front porch outside the door. I figured out pretty quick that Papi was kicking me out because he warned me a lot of times that one of these days I was going to say I was sorry but he was going to say, “Sorry doesn’t live here anymore.”

Mami hardly ever yells, even when Papi does, but she
talks loud and I could hear her before I even got to the door. I could hear them both. Mami said, “Give him a chance,” and Papi said, “That’s the problem,
querida.
You give him so many chances and he keeps blowing them. He’s never going to act like a man if you treat him like a baby.” Mami said something I couldn’t hear too good, but I heard her say Lupe’s name and Papi yelled, “If she’s so smart, what’s she doing with a
menso
who keeps flunking biology?” Then he started swearing in Spanish, so I coughed and made some noises and went in the house.

Papi crossed his arms and stared at me from across the kitchen. Mami started to come over and hug me, but he made a noise in his throat and she stopped and went over and sat down at the table. I told Papi I didn’t even care if he grounded me forever or kicked me out of the house because it didn’t matter anyway since Mr. Garcia said Lupe couldn’t go out with me anymore. She can’t even call me on the phone because I’m such a negative influence and a loser.

Papi said Mr. Garcia is pretty smart because him and Papi are thinking down the same road. He said Jaime and Primo are negative influences over me so he’s sending me to Truth or Consequences to stay with his brother,
mi tío
Antonio, until school gets out for the summer. Of all my uncles, I like Tío Antonio the most even though I don’t know him that good. He’s a park ranger and a bachelor and he is totally buff and he’s going to whip my
nalgas
into shape. I hope he does it, too, because then maybe Lupe and Papi and everybody can stop
being ashamed of me and start being proud of me for a change.

I been to T or C a lot of times to visit, so it’s not like I’m going someplace where I don’t know my way around. I got a lot of older cousins over there, like
mi primo
Miguel who graduated high school and went to TVI in Albuquerque and got a real good job as a X-ray technician at a hospital, which is the first time my mother tried to make me promise that I would start setting a good example for
los niños
and graduate high school because I’m way smarter than Miguel. So anyways, I been to T or C a lot and the last time I was there, I found this bookstore called the Black Cat downtown near the skate park. It’s a little bookstore, not like Barnes & Noble or Hastings where if a guy who looks like me goes there right away the detective starts following him around waiting for him to steal something.

The Black Cat doesn’t even have a detective, just this one lady with long yellow hair and a green hat. Not a church hat. Just a hat for fun. When I walked in, she didn’t even look nervous like I might steal something. She just said, “Hello,” and kept on petting her cat who sneaked down and ate my shoelaces when I was busy looking at the books. The lady even offered to buy me some new laces but it wasn’t her fault and besides it made me feel kind of special for a cat to eat my shoelaces, so I told her never mind.

It was a Saturday when I went to the bookstore and the lady told me if I come back the next day there will be a poetry
reading. She said I could hear some of the local poets do their thing but Papi likes to hit the road early in the morning whenever we visit someplace so I didn’t get to go. I didn’t really want to go to the poetry reading back then because that was before I wrote my poems and I still thought poems were all boring like the ones in school. Now I think maybe it would be kind of interesting.

There’s a lot of things I used to think I wouldn’t like but it turned out I do, like ballroom dancing and writing poetry.
Mi primo
Enrique says I better watch out or else I’m going to turn into a intellectual and then I’ll get my ass kicked all the time. I said what about Harvey Castro. He’s the smartest kid in his school and nobody kicks his ass. Primo said yeah, but you’re not Harvey Castro, you’re Eddie Corazon. And I said, “Who is Eddie Corazon?” but Primo thought I was making a joke, so he just laughed. But it wasn’t a joke. It was a real question except I don’t know the answer.

W
HEN ME AND
J
AIME WERE SITTING IN THE CAR OUTSIDE
Planned Parenthood waiting to find out if Lena was pregnant, Jaime was too nervous to have a conversation, so we just sat there and stared at the sky and the dirt with all the weeds and cactuses. And I started thinking that it isn’t such a good plan the way people have babies all the time whether they want them or not. I thought what if instead of having sex to make babies, people just had sex for fun and babies got made the same way yucca plants make a new baby yucca when they die. When the yucca gets real old, it kind of leans over and instead of sticking a big stalk with flowers straight up into the air, the stalk goes out sideways and plants its top into the ground. Pretty soon there’s a new little yucca growing out of
that old stalk and the old yucca hangs around for a while and then it just dries up and gets blown away unless some cow or deer who can’t find anything good to eat comes by and chomps it up. It’s like a whole big circle from living to dying, right there in the desert.

So, instead of making so many babies and filling up the world with so much population that people are starving all over the place, every person would just make one new baby when they died. And if people just dried up and disappeared after a while, you could save a bunch of money on funerals and stuff and you wouldn’t have to hurry up and go see them before they start to stink. You could just take your time as long as you got there before they got too dried up and blown away.

After the new baby got sprouted, all the other alive people would have to take care of the baby, so if somebody sucked or was a child molester or something, the other people would just pull up that person’s new little baby plant before it got ripe and they’d ditch it. You wouldn’t have too much population growth that way, but I guess eventually you wouldn’t have enough people because some of them would get chomped by a cow.

But I think it could still be a good idea if I figured it out better. I could probably figure it out real perfect if I used the plan Beecher showed us for how to solve a problem. Too bad she didn’t use that plan to figure out how to not get fired for being a liberal intellectual. Anyway, if you have a problem,
you shouldn’t just do the first thing that pops into your head because what if you just had a candy bar for lunch so your brain wasn’t working too good, or you snitched a bottle of tequila from your
abuelita
’
s
kitchen the night before and you woke up temporarily stupid. Instead of jumping on the first idea you think of, you’re supposed to use this special formula, like you have to identify your problem and brainstorm solutions and figure out if one of them would really work. Beecher gave us some sample problems to work on in groups.

Sometimes I like group work, but not if I get stuck with T.J. Ritchie who just leans back and crosses his arms and laughs at you and calls you kiss-ass pussies if you try to do the work, even if it’s kind of interesting. I got in a good problem group that day, though, with a couple of Anglo girls who wear glasses and no makeup so you can tell they want you to admire their brains instead of their
chichis.
Our example problem was what should you do if you have a teacher who hates you for real and it’s not just your imagination. I was pretty surprised when those smart girls brainstormed all kinds of torture we could do to the teacher, which was pretty fun. But then when we had to choose a real solution that you wouldn’t go to jail for, we came up with some pretty good ideas, like when that teacher calls you “beaner brain” or tells you that you’re a worthless piece of shit, you could secretly record it on your cell phone and then put it on YouTube so they couldn’t say you were a psycho liar who needs to get on medication before you crack up and bring an AK-47 to school.