Barely Missing Everything Page 4

  “Yes, y lo siento,” JD said again. His eyes were watery. She already busted Pops. Probably already threw him out, knowing Amá. Fantasy over. Shit.

  Amá stood up. Straightened her shoulders. Her thick brown hair still without any gray. “I need you out too. Right now,” she said decidedly. “You need to leave.”

  “Leave? Where am I supposed to go?” His eyes went wide as he tried hard not to cry. He imagined Amá tossing Pops out, then continuing the search of his room, still looking for proof he was on drugs or that he was somehow helping his old man cheat. Her now ready to believe the worst about him.

  “Go to Mass. Go to confession. Go anywhere but here. You don’t get to hide your father’s lies and stay living with me.”

  “I wasn’t lying for him!”

  “Then what were you doing?”

  “I don’t know. But not that.”

  • • •

  JD promised Amá he’d go to Mass and confession, and she promised he could come back. Twenty minutes later, making his way up Piedras Street, he walked past Gussie’s Tamales & Bakery. There was a line out the door, old ladies and groups of kids from the neighborhood holding empty pots for menudo to be poured into. He could smell the pan dulce as he went by. He was starving but had no cash for an empanada or marranito. Man, he loved those gingerbread pigs when they were soft and fresh from the oven, a glob of butter on the top. He crossed the street. Our Lady of Guadalupe was at the top of the hill, but before making his way all the way up, he decided to stop at Melinda Camacho’s and take a break under her mulberry tree.

  Sitting in the shade of her front yard, he wondered if Melinda was home. JD had been stupid for Melinda since he was a little kid, and he hated himself for being the longing-after type, a dude who pined after a girl who probably didn’t give a shit about him. He’d had one girlfriend since Melinda, a couple of hookups, but nothing coming close to what he felt for her. It was pathetic.

  Melinda’s parents were presumido types, college grads who moved back to the neighborhood a few months ago after years of West Side life. They were “reinvesting in a historic neighborhood” by buying and fixing up an old house—the only two-story on the block—and living in the barrio. What a joke. Melinda, who like most of his family, called him Juan Diego, had briefly explained this the last time they spoke, during a chance meeting at Gussie’s. She’d been dressed like someone going on a job interview, her dress long but form-fitting, a white-and-black number that only hinted at how banging she was. Her shiny black hair was neat, flowing down her back. Of course he had looked terrible—ratty basketball shorts and a stained white tee. He’d had wicked bedhead and worse morning breath. He was the dictionary definition of a dirtball.

  They’d met as chamacos. Her grandparents were neighbors with his grandmá. Now Melinda was a senior at Loreto Academy, a private school she’d been going to since kindergarten. JD had crushed on Melinda from the first time they met. She had oddly pale skin for a Mexican, was athletic and confident and sensitive. She couldn’t speak a word of Spanish, but spoke English like an adult; conversations she had with her parents sailed over his head. She couldn’t play outside very long because she would sunburn—JD could go all day in the sun, turning more and more prieto but never hurting because of it. Melinda wasn’t like anyone else in the neighborhood, and because of that the other kids either ignored her or hated her guts. To JD, though, she was irresistible.

  She was his first kiss, when both of them were in eighth grade. It had happened on her grandparents’ porch, on an evening about to turn to night, them sitting quietly after she’d road-rashed her knees during a game of stickball. JD had pulled Melinda to her feet and walked her home, the game continuing without them. Melinda hadn’t said a word, hadn’t disappeared inside the safety of her grandparents’ home, and instead sat on the porch swing. JD sat next to her, also silently. He remembered the smell of water from running hoses evaporating on the concrete sidewalk. Hearing dogs barking and soft television coming from inside the house. Melinda put her hand inside his, and he turned to look at her, her skin shiny with sweat as she brought her lips to his.

  After that day they spent a whole summer meeting by the light post on the corner of Memphis and San Marcial, taking walks through the neighborhood, holding hands, and kissing like crazy. JD grew comfortable with making the first move, leaning his head and lips toward hers. JD didn’t tell anyone about Melinda, not even Juan. He liked having a secret.

  Still, news of their walks made it around the block, and eventually Melinda’s papa caught them making out in the alley behind JD’s nana’s house. He yelled at Melinda to get away from that loser kid. Actually used the words “loser kid,” even though he knew JD’s name, his family. Melinda had looked into JD’s eyes, her expression going from startled to embarrassed before she turned and ran away. JD had had no idea that would be the last time they would be alone together—not counting their run-in at Gussie’s.

  Nobody seemed to be home at Melinda’s now, and JD began to feel like a sucker-ass stalker. Anyway, what could they possibly have in common anymore? He didn’t have good grades, wasn’t in the National Honor Society or running the student government like she probably was. He didn’t belong to any clubs except for the basketball team, and he was barely a part of that. He was a story from her past, a memory turned into whatever shady image her father had created for her—another hood rat who would derail all the plans he had for her. The fucker was probably right.

  He was stupid for still thinking about Melinda at all. He hopped up and quickly walked the rest of the way to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Then he stopped. He didn’t mind going to the church like Amá had asked, but confession wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t because he had anything against the idea of spilling his guts to a stranger—what did he care? But what did it matter if a god forgave your mistakes if no one else did? So he pulled out a cigarette. If he wasted enough time, he could head back home, Amá would think he’d been to confession, and he could get some sleep.

  After his smoke, he went inside and sat in the back pew. The place was empty, Masses already over for the day. At least now he could tell Amá he went to church. Sunlight cut through stained glass windows, causing images of saints and crosses, chalices floating above them, to glow. On the walls were paintings of more saints. The Archangel Michael spearing the Devil, and John the Baptist standing in a river, arms extended over a bent body ready to be baptized; La Virgen presenting herself to Juan Diego, him clutching a shroud with her image. JD had been named after the saint, and he guessed he was lucky he hadn’t been born on the feast of Guadalupe a few days later; his life was every bit the motherfucker without having to go through it with a girl’s name.

  He rubbed his forehead tiredly, feeling the bump, and remembered planting his head into a fence post. He wondered if Juan had been able to get away from the cops and was now afraid he hadn’t. It would be his fault for running, for calling Juan to follow. Shit!

  • • •

  Back home, JD looked around his room. It was a disaster—DVDs everywhere, his clothes and movie equipment dumped like garbage. Seeing all those old camcorders and cameras, bought or stolen from Salvation Armies and garage sales, cheap stands and floodlights he planned to one day use for lighting, yanked from the back of his closet and still never used, was . . . embarrassing. He had the feeling—like Juan not-so-secretly wanting to play pro ball—that trying to be a filmmaker was a born fucked idea. He’d been hoarding secondhand equipment for years, wanting to create Guillermo del Toro monsters or Robert Rodriguez action, but he wasn’t sure how to do anything beyond stockpiling old stuff. Because, shit, he had no idea where to start. Or how. And even if he tried, anything he made from junk, stayed junk.

  Picking up a slim, pocket-size video camera, a Panasonic HM-TA1 he found at a thrift store for twenty bucks and the only digital one in the group, he’d surveyed his room through the viewfinder. From behind the lens the room seemed like it belonged to someone else. JD had never
shot anything more than a few test shots with any of his cameras, but staring at his stripped bed and the pile of clothes on the floor, the opened drawers and emptied shelves, he decided, What the hell. He flipped on the camera, which surprisingly had 10-percent battery life, and panned across the room. “This morning Amá found the condoms in my dresser, the ones Pops had been hiding under the front seat of his truck. I hid them after finding them on Christmas Eve. And now my old man has left. Or, actually, Amá kicked him out.” JD filmed across the room and stopped on the note Amá had taped to the mirror. He zoomed in on her writing, wondering how he sounded on film. Probably like an idiot. He continued narrating anyway. “ ‘Your father will pick you up at 6 to get your car. Don’t let him in the house.’ Well, I’m pretty sure I ruined the family. . . . Cut.”

  • • •

  Neither JD nor his father said a word as they pulled onto I-10 and drove toward Danny’s. His old man was still dressed from work, sleeves rolled to his forearms, his black tattoo, Amá’s name written in Old English lettering—Estela—partially exposed. JD dreamed of covering his own body with tattoos, though none as tacky as a name—even if it was Amá’s. The cabin of the truck smelled of sweat and metal. In the bed his old man’s toolboxes, a pair of jumper cables, and loose nuts and bolts slid from side to side as they changed lanes and hammered down the highway, exhaust blasting behind them.

  The radio was on KLAQ, the official shitty classic-rock station of Chuco, and barely audible. JD struggled to hear the song playing but couldn’t quite make it out. It was either Poison or Mötley Crüe, some overproduced hair metal bullshit that was as bad as the overproduced indie garbage hipsters liked. JD wondered what his father had been into when he’d been his age. Metal or alternative? Hip-hop? Norteño or mariachi? Maybe he hated music, wished he could live in the town from Footloose. Whatever the old man liked, JD wondered why he had never thought to ask before. Why he didn’t know anything about his old man except the one thing he didn’t want to know.

  Rolling down the window, JD stuck his arm out; he liked feeling the resistance against it as the cabin filled with the sound of rushing air. He could sense his old man staring at him and rolled the window back up.

  “Don’t tell me your friend lives past the Americas. I just spent all day over there.”

  “They just moved. His dad got some big-timer job after retiring from the army,” JD said. “They think they’re all good now.”

  “No seas pendejo. I should’ve done that, been a lifer. I’d be an E-9 by now. Actually, probably retired, too, but still.”

  “Why’d you leave, then? What’s an E-9?” JD adjusted himself, wanting his old man to talk into the camera he was hiding under his jacket. Pops only talked army whenever JD failed to clean the yard to his specs or needed a haircut, whenever JD really pissed him off.

  “Because your amá was pregnant with Alma,” he said. “Your amá didn’t want to leave nana and her family. I got out for”—he tilted his head slightly, clenched his jaw—“for her.” His face looked like he was trying to keep from puking his regrets all over the truck’s cabin. “Our life could’ve been way different.”

  “And an E-9?”

  “Goddamn it!” Pumping hard on the brakes, Pops slapped the dashboard with the palm of his hand as a black Honda cut in front of them to exit the highway. His entire body was tense, arms flexed and bent, his left hand gripping the wheel and the right fist suspended in midair, wanting to strike. JD knew his father wasn’t really pissed at the Honda driver or at having to drive to the East Side. These were the types of things he was going to yell about instead of stolen condoms or being kicked out of the house. “Being an E-9 is being the boss,” Pops said, calming down. “One stripe better than your little buddy’s dad got to be, by the way.”

  As far as JD knew, his old man had always been in charge of himself. He’d been a plumber for as long as JD could remember, but that wasn’t all he did. He hung drywall and installed flooring and roofs and could fix almost anything on a car. He worked all the time, but he never seemed to have a boss or a regular schedule—he never seemed to have a lot of money, either.

  “What were you doing up here?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Plumbing job?” JD asked, looking straight ahead at the open road. The radio station cut to static as they exited the highway and drove along a two-lane road with no lights until they reached Cascade Point.

  “They’re building tract homes like crazy out here. It’s better money than clearing drains and septics all day.”

  “Oh,” JD said. “These houses are nice, though.” He fingered the camera in his jacket pocket, the back smooth and warm. He had no idea what he hoped to get, but maybe Pops would say something important, something to make him feel better about what was happening and then he’d have it. Instead Pops snorted.

  “Shit, they’re building them too fast. Besides, they’re nothing but chicken wire and stucco. They’re no good.”

  “I thought these houses were for richy-riches.”

  “Some are, but even those are built exactly the same. Most of the places out here don’t cost nothing. People from Central and the Lower Valley are moving this way. All the new soldiers coming to Fort Bliss. It’ll turn shitty in a few years. Your little friend’s daddy just traded one ghetto for another. . . . Is that your car?”

  Pops didn’t waste time, pulling up to the Escort and going for his toolbox, waving for the keys before opening the door and popping the hood. For the first time all day he looked relaxed. Comfortable. JD didn’t know if he ever looked like that doing anything. Probably not even when he slept. Without a word his old man looked over the engine bay, not touching anything. JD wanted to know what Pops was looking at, to know how his car worked—but Pops had never showed him how, not really, always too busy or explaining things too fast when he did.

  “Try it,” Pops said, tossing the keys back to JD, who fumbled them, barely out of the truck himself. He took his seat behind the wheel, took a breath, and turned the key, wanting, somehow, for the car not to start. Of course the motor wheezed to life, just like he knew it would. Pops appeared suddenly through the windshield as he closed the hood. “It seems good now.”

  “Thanks, Pops.” JD looked at his father. Pops must’ve known JD was full of shit, the car abandoned for reasons that had nothing to do with a bad starter or a dead battery, but he didn’t want answers or an explanation, instead tossing his tools in the bed of his truck, okay with the lie. Was JD wrong for wanting answers from his old man? To know why Pops was seeing another woman? To know who she was? He felt like a total hypocrite.

  “Go straight home,” Pops said, not bothering to look at him. “And put some ice on that chichón. Your head looks lumpy.”

  “I swear . . . I swear it didn’t start,” JD stumbled. “I’m not lying.”

  “Straight home,” Pops said as he cranked the truck’s engine. He pulled into the street as JD retrieved his camera from his pocket to record his father driving away. But the camera was now cool, the battery dead.

  FABI AND HER CARIÑO

  (CHAPTER FOUR)

  Fabi sat on the toilet and peed, holding the thin plastic stick between her legs. After freaking out all weekend about Juan, she had wondered how bad the week was going to be, and now Monday morning was starting off this way. This was her third pregnancy test in three hours. The first showed a positive, a blue plus sign in the test window; the second was unclear—a pair of parallel lines meant to signify positive or negative but instead looking like a blob of pink. Her period was a month late, and she’d been off birth control for way longer than that—she hadn’t been with anyone in forever, and getting pregnant wasn’t something she worried about, not even after meeting Ruben.

  When she finished she placed the stick on the toilet tank, next to a dusty basket of potpourri. The overhead fluorescent light buzzed and flickered like it always did. The flooring needed to be redone, mildew seeming to have replaced the grout between t
he cracked and mismatched tiles. The faucet dripped nonstop. Complaining to the landlady, an obese woman name Flor Ramirez, would be a waste of time. Juan called her Jabba the Slut—awful. But she was lazy. Flor still hadn’t fixed the window in her bedroom that had slipped from its frame, or looked into the leak stain forming on the ceiling above her bed. It had started small, just a swirl, but grew into a flared, brown hurricane.

  Fabi washed her hands and sat back on the toilet, waiting for the digital test—stupid expensive—to spell things out for her. If positive, the word PREGNANT would appear across the viewfinder.

  Meanwhile Ruben and Juan sat in the living room, awkwardly watching TV together. Of course, Juanito hated Ruben. He’d hated all her boyfriends. Fabi always thought Juan was just being territorial, but now she wasn’t so sure. After watching his power struggle with his coach the other night, it was possible he thought all men, except his Grampá, were sketchy. Maybe he hated all of them. Still, Ruben was oddly patient, putting up with him. It had been his idea to watch Juanito’s basketball game, and then he’d been okay with Juanito skipping out on them afterward, telling her not to worry about it. Like he got ditched all the time.

  Then this morning Fabi had had to pick Juanito up at county jail. His bond had been set at $1,000, but a bond company—Get Free!— took $300 to get him out. Nothing free about that. There had been plenty of times when Fabi felt like a shit mom, but picking him up from jail and him not even looking happy to see her when he got released, that was the shittiest. Her life was some kind of a ghetto sitcom. She peeked at the pregnancy test.

  The little white stick read PREGNANT, and Fabi felt like her bones had been replaced by steel rods. She couldn’t move from the toilet seat, so she just cupped her hands around her face and cried. She’d been in her father’s bathroom when she’d learned about Juanito almost eighteen years earlier, reading a similar stick covered in pee. She remembered how the room smelled like his aftershave, Aqua Velva or was it Brut? Her mother had just died, her sister about to disappear to college. At least this time she didn’t puke all over the sink.