Muchacho (4 page)

“Shut up!” Teeny White covered her ears. “You’re crazy. You’re making me sick.” And a bunch of other kids started yelling at T.J. to shut up because he was advocating hate crimes. McElroy tried to act like he was in charge of everything. He huffed up to his desk and wrote T.J. a referral to the office, but T.J. just crumpled up the referral and threw it on
the floor. He stood up and kicked the back of his chair so hard that one of the bolts came loose and the chair sort of flopped sideways like T.J. had killed it, too.

“I ain’t advocating nothing,” T.J. said. “I’m just saying if you want people to understand how something feels, sometimes you have to do the same thing to them. Like if we could lock all the teachers in one big room and treat them like shit, maybe some of them would stop acting like such fucking jerks to us.” He glared at McElroy who ran over to the red phone and called security. T.J. just laughed and shook his head and pointed at McElroy. “See what I’m talking about? Can’t even have an honest discussion about anything. If you don’t say what they want, or if you treat them like they treat you, they beat you down or lock you up.”

T.J. walked over to the doorway and slammed himself up against the wall and held his arms out in front with his wrists together like he was waiting to get handcuffed. When security showed up it was just the little blond lady guard. She looks like a kid but up close you can tell she’s old enough to be your mother. They always send her to get T.J. because they probably think he wouldn’t beat up a female, especially a old one. He would if he wanted to, though. I know he would, except then he would go to real jail instead of just juvi where he has a lot of friends so he doesn’t care. He won’t even get sent to juvi for killing a chair and being disruptive, though. He’ll just get a three-day vacation which is supposed to give him time to think about his behavior and realize he needs to learn
some anger-management skills, but he’ll just sit at home and drink his dad’s beer and smoke some dope and play video games and watch some porn if he can find his dad’s new hiding place.

When the security lady walked in, T.J. slammed himself up against the wall again and held out his wrists, but the lady just laughed and pointed to the door. T.J. took a couple steps and then turned back around and said, “You guys should think about what I said. If I was a black guy and I said all that shit, you know they would lock me up like they did Huey Newton or kill me like they did Malcolm X. But I’m white and I don’t even like black people that much.”

T.J. shot a look at the black kid and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Sorry, but that’s just how I am. I say what a lot of people are probably thinking and everybody can pretend they didn’t think it and call me crazy and stupid. And maybe my idea is crazy, but it ain’t stupid. I’m not stupid.”

“That’s enough,” McElroy told us after T.J. finally followed the security lady outside, but nobody was talking. We were all trying not to look at the black kid. And I could tell that some of the other kids were thinking about T.J.’s idea too. I mean, I don’t think killing people is such a great idea, especially cops, because then your life is really over. Plus, even cops who are prejudiced probably have kids or a wife or a mother who loves them even if they’re a stupid jerk. But in a way T.J. was right. Teachers ask us to have a discussion but then if they don’t like what we say, they tell us to shut up.
And he’s right about making people think, too. Sometimes you got to knock people down and shove the other guy’s shoes onto their feet before they will walk a mile in them.

T.J. looked different walking beside that little security guard. He didn’t look small, because he’s too big to look small, but even from the back, you could tell he knew everybody was watching him get walked by security. Like he was walking beside his grandmother or like he was walking beside a real cop.

You walk different when you walk beside a cop because it’s like you can see yourself and you think, Do I look like a rat who just turned on his homies to save his ass? Or, Do I look like a pervert who just passed by the elementary school with his pants unzipped and his dog hanging out? I hope I don’t look like somebody stupid enough to sell meth because that shit is death, man. I’m pretty sure I don’t look like a cop, even a undercover cop, because cops have a look in their eyes like if you mess up I will rip your liver out and eat it for lunch. I don’t think that’s what my eyes say, even when I try to look all kick-ass. The worst my eyes probably say is maybe I’m not that good of a fighter but I go down hard.

I walked with a cop once, right here at Bright Horizons. I wasn’t getting arrested or anything. I was being an escort. Beecher wrote to the police and asked them did they want to come over and give a pep talk to her class so we might decide to stop being juvenile delinquents. We didn’t think the cops would come—Hey, that reminds me of this baseball cap
mi
primo
Enrique used to wear all the time that says
CALL 911. MAKE A COP COME.
Primo had to stop wearing it because the cops didn’t think it was too funny—anyways, we didn’t think the cops would waste their time talking to us, especially since most of us already did too much talking to the cops out on the street, but Beecher got a letter from this one cop, Sergeant Chris Cabrera, who said he would be honored to be our guest speaker.

Beecher picked me to escort Sgt. Cabrera from the office to our room because I made the mistake of telling T.J. Ritchie to shut up after he said, “Oh goody. I’m going to take notes when he’s talking so I can learn how to be a better person.” I told T.J. to get a little respect because Cabrera could have just flipped us off and Beecher said, “Eddie is absolutely right.” And then she asked me to stay after class so she could explain my escort duties.

“Hey, you’re a male escort,” Henry Dominguez said.

“Men don’t call male escorts, you idiot,” T.J. said, and Teeny White said, “Uh-huh. Some of them do,” but Beecher cut that discussion off at the neck because she could see where it was headed. And when Sgt. Cabrera showed up and the office called me to come and get him, he turned out to be a she. It used to be all the cops were men but now they got girl cops in all kinds of sizes and even the little ones can kick your butt pretty good with their bare hands.

Sgt. Cabrera wasn’t little. She was taller than me, probably five-ten, and she looked like she might do a little weight
training on the side because she had her sleeves rolled up and her biceps were pretty cut and you could see the veins bulging on her wrists just like the bodybuilders. She told me she was from Puerto Rico but everybody thinks she’s Mexican because she lives in New Mexico, even the Mexicans. I told her they should know better because she doesn’t sound Mexican to me, she sounds like New York and she said, “Bingo!” and aimed her hand at me like a gun and shot me, except she was smiling, so I shot her back.

“What are you going to do after you graduate?” she asked me right before we got to Beecher’s room. I told her I wasn’t sure I would graduate because of various things and she said, “You mean you haven’t decided to make it happen?” and she nodded like she knew everything about me. I was glad we got to the room right after that because even though she was friendly and everything, it made me feel nervous when she looked me in the eye. She didn’t have the rip-your-liver-out look. She had a nice look, kind of like Beecher, except Sgt. Cabrera’s look had some kind of extra power, like X-ray vision or something and you could tell she could cut right through whatever shit you tried to throw at her. All during her talk, I felt like she was staring at me even though she probably wasn’t. I stayed in my seat when everybody was clapping after she finished inspiring us, hoping that Beecher would just let Sgt. Cabrera walk back to the office herself since she knew where it was, but both of them stood there and smiled at me, so I had to be her escort again.

I thought Sgt. Cabrera would give me a lecture or maybe ask me a bunch of questions on the way to the office, but she didn’t. She just asked me did I like to read and I said yes only please don’t tell anybody because I got a reputation to maintain, and she said I should read
The Four Agreements
by this guy named Don Miguel Ruiz.

“It’s a real short book,” she said, “and it sounds too simple, but if you really think about what it says, you realize it’s very deep and it can change your life.”

I nodded but I didn’t say what I was thinking was that my life could use some change but not the kind you get from reading a little book. My life would need an encyclopedia.

“It might even make you decide to graduate, muchacho.” Sgt. Ca brera winked at me like we had some big secret going and I was glad there was nobody else around.

“It’s not up to me,” I said. “I don’t have enough credits and I’m flunking biology.”

“You’re only a junior,” Sgt. Cabrera said. “You have a whole summer and another year ahead of you. Why not think positive? Your thoughts create your intentions and your intentions create your reality.” She winked at me again. “That’s from the book.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, and then I walked faster so I could get that crazy cop to the office and get rid of her. She must of gone to high school or they wouldn’t let her join the police but she must of forgot what it’s like. If you want to graduate high school, you have to be a liar. You have to pretend you
care about stuff you don’t care about, like what does a frog’s guts look like and how to multiply fractions, and you have to keep your mouth shut when you feel like talking but then you have to talk when you don’t feel like it, except you have to say what you’re supposed to say and not what you really think. You have to wear clothes you don’t like and act respectful to people who need a good punch in the face.

Papi is always telling me to just act like I respect everybody and life will be easier. Like he always tells me to just shut up and do what the teachers tell me and I won’t have any more troubles. And I know he tells me to keep my big fat
boca
shut because he can’t do it, neither, which is why he doesn’t have a job right now. He always gets hired on construction crews when they first start up because he’s big and fast. He can swing a hammer with both hands so good that he only needs one hit per nail and if they put him on one end of a two-by-twelve and a guy with a nail gun on the other end, they end up meeting in the middle. But if the boss talks down to him or says one thing about wetbacks or beaners or sometimes if they even just ask if anybody wants Taco Bell for lunch, Papi just flips the guy off and picks up his lunch pail and heads for his truck. And the next time that foreman needs a crew, Papi doesn’t even try to get on because he would have to say he was sorry when he wasn’t.

If it wasn’t for my mother, I wouldn’t even stay in school for one second, but I promised her I would graduate and set a good example for Letty and Juanito and my little cousins. I
didn’t promise her on purpose, but I promised her and she never forgets that kind of stuff, especially since I don’t hardly hang around with her too much anymore. We used to sit in the living room and read sometimes after supper and sometimes even on the weekend if I didn’t have something better to do, but now I rather read by myself. Not that I don’t like my mother—I even love her—but after you get to be like ten years old it’s too weird to sit around with your mother.

That’s what I was doing when I accidentally promised to graduate. Sitting there reading. Letty was reading, too, and even Juanito was being quiet for a change, but I couldn’t concentrate because Mami kept sighing and blowing her nose in a tissue. I asked her was she sick and she just sighed again and didn’t answer me. She’s usually the smiling one in our house, so I started thinking what could be wrong with her if she wasn’t sick and Papi wasn’t even there to make her cry.

As soon as I thought of Papi, I remembered that he told me a couple of weeks earlier don’t forget Mami’s birthday. But I forgot and I figured he did, too, because it was almost seven o’clock and he wasn’t even home yet. I didn’t have any money to go out and get something, so I went in my room and looked around to see if there was any kind of good junk that I could give Mami for a present. But there wasn’t anything. So I took a piece of paper and drew a swirly border all around the edges and wrote
OFFICIAL CERTIFICATE
in big letters at the top. Then I filled it in like one of those gift certificates the
viejas
give you at Christmas so you can spend $20 at some
store, or $50 once in a while if the
vieja
is rich, except instead of money, I wrote it out real fancy that I promised to stay in school and graduate. I signed it with my official signature and printed my whole name underneath.

Mami started crying for real when I gave her that certificate and I felt pretty good for about two minutes until we heard a big noise out in the backyard and we looked out the window and there was Papi standing beside this little crape myrtle tree with pink flowers all over it. Mami ran outside and started jumping up and down because she kept wanting one of those trees but you can’t hardly find them in Rosablanca. And there was a little white box hanging on the tree with a pink ribbon around it. Mami handed Papi my certificate and grabbed the box and opened it and there was some diamond earrings inside. While she was putting on the earrings, Papi read my certificate, but he didn’t say anything, just looked at me hard for a couple seconds and then folded the certificate up and gave it back to Mami.

We had homemade
sopapillas
for dessert that night with lots of honey because Mami was happy about so many things. Not just the earrings and the crape myrtle tree and my certificate. I knew she was the happiest because she knew Papi really was working overtime the last couple months like he said and not doing something he shouldn’t be doing, which is what she had been thinking. She never said it, but I could tell by the way her mouth got real tight whenever she looked at the clock in the kitchen while she was fixing supper and the way she watched Papi eat when he wasn’t looking.

If I would have waited a couple minutes longer that day, we would have heard Papi before I went and made that dumb certificate. Mami hung it on the refrigerator, so I have to see it every time I want some juice or an apple or something. I thought about hiding it or tearing it up, but it wouldn’t get me out of the deal because I already put it in writing and everybody in the family read it a hundred times. It’s probably a good thing I wrote it down, though, because otherwise I might have dropped out of school one of those days when I felt like breaking all the windows just to make something interesting happen instead of all those dumb assignments and tests.