We Were Here (37 page)

September 8

It’s late and I’m sitting on a hill of old hay and dirt and a couple worn blankets in an abandoned horse shed outside Fresno. Rondell’s on the other end of the shed, head propped up on his bag, snoring in a mixed-up rhythm that could only come out of a dude as big as Rondell. There’s a dull lightbulb buzzing over my head, hanging on a skinny wire from the ceiling. It gives off just enough light so I can write my book.

And, man, my shoulders and back and hands are so sore I can barely even sit up. Plus my legs ache like they never ached before. The work we did all day was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Even the back part of my knees and between my fingers is sore as hell. Spots where you never even knew you had muscles, man. And I can’t really even write that much ’cause we gotta be back up and on the truck in like six hours.

My gramps and his crew don’t pick fruit out in the fields anymore. They work for a private landscaper on these huge mansions being built on old Fresno farmland. I used to think picking fruit was hard, but that wasn’t nothing compared to doing landscaping, man. Rondell doesn’t seem to mind it, but I don’t even know how much more of this I could take. I’m not even gonna lie. Soon as we make back all the money I’m gonna be ready as hell to move on.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just the work that’s gonna run me off. It’s also the fact that my grandparents don’t really seem like they want me here. Especially my gramps. Me and Rondell showed up outside their door early this morning and gramps didn’t even look surprised or happy to see me.

Soon as he opened the door I went right up to him and shook his hand and smiled big and said: “Hey, Grandpa, nice to see you.”

He didn’t say anything back, just looked at my grandma, who was drying her hands behind him on a dish towel. And then he looked back to me.

I moved back a step and started stuttering my ass off: “Anyways, Grandpa, I was just—Me and Rondell here—this is my friend Rondell, by the way—we were wondering could me and him get work with you. Not for that long or anything. And for just whatever money you regularly give to people.”

He looked at me for a sec and looked at his watch.

Then he led us out to this other old Mexican dude wearing a sombrero, said something in Spanish, and they both nodded. His friend threw our bags in the shed we’re in now and handed me and Rondell a bunch of work tools. Then he pointed us to the back of an old run-down pickup and drove us down a bunch of dirt roads toward their work site.

As we pulled up the driveway of this guy Mr. Easton’s house, Rondell nudged me with his arm and said: “Hey, Mexico.”

“Hey what,” I said, but my mind was still trying to figure out why I ever thought my grandparents would want me here after everything that happened in our family. First of all their son (my pop) dying in the war, and second of all the terrible thing that happened in Stockton and how Diego has always been their favorite, not me.

“I was just thinkin’ somethin’,” Rondell said.

“I ain’t really in the mood, to be honest,” I told him. “Nothin’ personal.”

He stared at the side of my face for a minute and then said: “All right. I was just thinkin’ if you’s all right, ’cause it seem like somethin’ be botherin’ you. But I ain’t gonna ask it.”

I shook my head, picturing my gramps’s face again when
we shook hands. I told Rondell: “Maybe I messed up bringin’ us here, man.”

He looked at me like he didn’t understand what I was saying, but I didn’t feel like going into shit.

The Rest
of the Workday:

It was even worse with my gramps once we started actually working. He barely acknowledged my existence. After the lunch break we even got matched up together, just the two of us, digging main line—eight inches wide, eighteen deep-where they were gonna install a fancy sprinkler system. Gramps didn’t say a word the whole time, just kept slamming his pick in the ground, breaking open the earth, then raising it up and slamming his pick in the ground again. My job was to follow in his tracks, take shovelfuls of loose dirt and rocks and clumps of old crabgrass, toss everything into piles on my right.

The whole time I tried not to think how much it was killing my back and shoulders and hands, the streaks of dirty sweat running into my eyes and stinging. I tried to not even look up, just put my head down and pretended to be in a machine trance—which really I wasn’t.

Even when I did accidentally look up all I’d see was my grandpa’s ass.

Whenever I got behind a little he’d shake his head and sigh, toss down his pick and grab a second shovel. He’d start shoveling from where he left off with the pick. When we met in the middle, the metal from our tools clinking as we tried to pick up the last bits of loose dirt, he’d toss the shovel to the side again and grab his pick.

He didn’t even look at me the whole time.

When they drove us back here at the end of today my gramps’s friend told us when to be on the truck tomorrow and then some young girl brought us a big plate of egg and chorizo and tortillas.

The best part of the whole day, though, was when my gramps’s friend came back to the shed twenty minutes later and handed us seventy-five bucks each, cash. It felt pretty damn sick shoving all that scratch in the petty-cash envelope.

But overall I don’t know, man.

My gramps seriously doesn’t seem too happy to have me here. And even my grandma ducked right back in the kitchen when she saw me at the front door this morning. I knew the work would be hard as hell, but I don’t even care about that. I just feel weird that my grandparents are acting so bummed out to be seeing me. They’re seeming just like my moms.

You know what I think? I think no matter how long I live or where I go or what I accomplish—even if I became the damn President of the United States or a famous actor or businessman—I think none of us will ever get past what happened with me and Diego. Including me.

Everywhere I go there’s gonna be someone who knows me, and it’ll be right there in their eyes. What I did. And I’ll always see it. ’cause I’ll be looking.

Even if I went on some remote island where there wasn’t any other people besides me. Still, man. There’d be a mirror somewhere. And I’d see it in my own self.

September 9

Me and Rondell got put at a different site today. Our job was to dig out this tree, roots and everything, in front of a huge
house that’s still under construction. It didn’t seem like much when we first went up to it. The tree was scrawny as hell and barely had any leaves. But we spent all damn day digging around the base and couldn’t even budge it. The minute I’d think we had it surrounded, I’d bang my shovel into another fat root and Rondell would have to swing on it with his pick again.

At one point I stood up straight, balanced my tool against the damn tree and wiped the sweat out of my eyes. I looked around at all the other workers on site busting their asses. Some were young, some old, but they were all Mexicans. And not one of ’em was struggling as much as me. Not even Rondell, man. They just kept going and going like it wasn’t nothing.

I almost threw my shovel down and quit my ass right there, man. I thought how maybe I wasn’t cut out to be no good worker or whatever. Maybe that’s what my gramps still sees every time he looks in my face, like when I showed up to his front door yesterday morning. Just some blond boy from Beverly Hills with no heart.

But I didn’t quit, though, man. Nah, I just grabbed my damn shovel and dug my ass back into the fat root again. No way I was gonna let everybody think I was a punk. I smacked down with the sharp edge over and over until I finally broke through. Then I stood looking at the two separate pieces for a sec, and I dropped the shovel and flexed my biceps, told Rondell: “Yo, Rondo! You see these guns, boy? This tree can’t fuck with nobody this jacked!”

I know I was acting like a damn schizo, but I didn’t even care.

Rondell looked up at me and giggled a little in his cupped fist. Then he went right back to digging.

I looked back at the roots and thought how I had to show my gramps I had heart. I didn’t like him thinkin’ of me havin’ no heart.

Soon as we came home tonight we got paid again, and the same little girl brought us a plate of egg and chorizo and tortillas. I tried to talk to her this time, asked her what her name was and how she knew my grams or whatever, but she just handed us the plate and then ran out of the shed all embarrassed. Me and Rondell laughed and then reached for the food and ate like two of the starvingest dudes you ever met. It’s pretty crazy how hungry you could get after trying to dig up a damn tree all day.

After a few minutes there was a little knock on the outside of the shed and my grandma came walking in. She stood a few feet away from us and got this sad look on her face. “Miguel,
mijo
.”

Me and Rondell both stood up and I said: “Hey, Grandma.”

“Mijo
, are you okay, honey?”

My eyes started getting all this pressure on ’em after I heard her say if I was okay.

“I’m okay, Grandma,” I said. “What about you?”

“Okay,
mijo.”
She ran her hands down her cheeks and sighed. “Me and your grandpa, we’re getting by.”

Then she just stood there for a while, staring at me. For the last twenty years my grandma’s been teaching English to all the kids that work with my gramps—which makes it crazy he’s never learned it himself. She’s pretty short and thin with big dark eyes. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an old Mexican grandma, but she basically looks just like that. Only her skin is a little darker than most grandmas, like she’s got mostly Indian in her. And her gray hair is almost always tied
back in a ponytail, but for some reason tonight she had it just regular. I was shocked about how long it seemed that way.

I looked at her for a while and she looked back at me, and it started feeling mad awkward ’cause nobody was talking, so I pointed at Rondell and said: “Grandma, this is my friend.”

She turned and said hello to him.

“He’s Rondell,” I said.

They both nodded some more and then my grams went right back to looking at me. And this time her eyes got all glassy and a couple tears came running down her cheeks, which made the pressure on the back of my eyes get way worse. But I clenched up my whole body so nothing would come out.

She wiped her face with her sleeve and said:
“Mijo
, I can’t believe I’m looking at you. It’s been long.”

I felt all awkward and my eyes were acting up and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say back, so I spun around and went to my bag, unzipped the zipper and acted like I was looking for something. “Anyways, Grandma,” I said, over my shoulder. “Me and Rondell came up here to say hi to you guys and do some work. Just for a week or whatever. We owe somebody money and we gotta pay ’em back, so it’s nice of Grandpa to let us work for him.”

I pretended like I was digging for a few more seconds. When I turned around, though, she was wiping more tears. “Oh,
mijo,”
she said in this incredibly sad voice.

I thought how this was the first time I’d seen her since what happened. My moms didn’t say for anybody to come up and visit me before I got put in Juvi. Actually, I’d only seen my grandma like two times since my pop died and we all went to his military funeral together. Plus maybe she even knew from my moms how I was AWOL from the Lighthouse too. I guess when you think about it, there was a lot to be
sad about when it came to me. Especially if you were my grandma.

I didn’t know what else to do or say, so I just stayed there at my bag, digging my hand around my extra shirt and other pair of jeans, acting like there was something I couldn’t find.

Rondell stood there too, looking back and forth between us, not saying a word.

I said over my shoulder: “You wanna sit with us for a minute, Grandma?”

“Oh, no,
mijo”
she said. “I just wanted to say hi while your grandfather was out. Maybe I can heat up some soup or leftover tamales?”

I looked at Rondell and then back at my grandma. “Nah, that’s okay,” I told her. “Those egg tortillas were perfect, right Rondell?”