Dad pulls up to the convenience store by the side of the highway next to the golf court. He steps out of the car and asks you, completely relaxed, if you’d prefer to stay or go in with him. You tell him the same thing you’ll tell him the day we met, that you’ll wait for him in the car. You feel exhausted. You spent the whole afternoon helping Dad plant new guava trees on the dairy farm.
He upgraded you to a grown-up shovel that is almost as tall as you are, and the tender skin of your palms screams every time you open and close your fists, blisters already forming. Dad has worked in the fields since he was three years old. You, on the other hand, are a pampered city boy that has never worked a day in his life.
You are still at that stage where you follow Dad everywhere like a chubby key charm, basking in the golden joy of his approval when you do exactly what he wants you to do, what is right for a man to do. In little less than a year that docile attitude will banish. You began to change, and everything became more confusing and hostile. You didn’t understand why at first. Then, one afternoon, while riding home from school, your father informed you that he could no longer afford to send you to the same school as your current best friend and crush. You couldn’t help it. You were heartbroken. You began to cry.
Don’t be such a fag, son. The words slapped the world into focus, like putting on glasses for the first time. After that moment the relationship with Dad was never the same. You started avoiding him, feeling those words crawling under your skin like fire ants every time he tried to hug you or compliment you, or show you his love in any way. You swatted him like a gnat, and your family blamed you for your resentment. I don’t understand why you hate your father. After everything he’s done for you and your siblings. I don’t know what kind of father you’ll be, Mom spat at you, disgusted.
No one understood, least of all you. You blamed yourself for that distance between the two that widened each second like a chasm. You were unable to defend yourself against the accusations of your family members because the only defense you could think of was also a confession, and you were terrified. Terrified, like your father, of being that faggot son. You weren’t gracious about it, and maybe that’s the true problem. You were mean and cruel, your life in the dark twisting you into one of those sea monsters of the abyss, all sharp teeth. You couldn’t even bear to look at yourself in the mirror, you hated yourself. You weren’t even twelve years old.
Inside the slowly suffocating heat of the car, you play with the stereo. It smells like old coins. You browse through your older sibling’s CDs, but quickly grow bored. You glance out the window and the golden afternoon light drips over your eyelids thick like honey. You yawn. Your tired eyes travel to the golf court beyond the red dirt road that separates its rusting fence from the convenience store like a red tongue. In the corner, littered with foggy soda bottles and sun-bleached bags of chips, there is a slab of concrete in front of some mesquites that pikes your interest. You are too tired to investigate. You doze off nestled in amber like a prehistoric insect.
The day we met you’ll be tired, too, but that won’t be an obstacle. For the first time in a while, you went with Dad to his dairy farm just outside of the city to help him plant more guava trees. The ones he planted alone kept dying. Only the ones you helped him plant were able to survive. It was beneath one of these trees where they’ll find him, gun in hand, head burst open like an overripe guava. He thought his job was done. His other kids were all grown up. He was never able to stop blaming himself. Mom, too.
The day we met will begin tense and in silence. Dad was speaking on the phone with an uncle that worked for him at the farm, and it was in the way he ignored you that you knew he was painfully aware of your presence. A few nights ago, he told you it was finally time for you to sleep alone. You are a big boy now. Your room had just been redecorated to your liking. Still, you were terrified, and you couldn’t really explain why. Your inability to shape that elusive fear into concise language is what angered your parents the most. They thought you were just spoiled. Alone in your room, you began to cry.
Little by little, you turned up the volume of your wailing, certain one of your siblings or mom would come to your aid, but it was Dad who burst through the door, nostrils flaring like the minotaur. No, no, no. No seas tan maricón, hijo. Ya vete a dormir o te voy a meter un chingazo para que llores con razón. Later, as you were pretending to be asleep, you heard your dad opening the door and entering your room carrying his pillow, coming to sleep with you to calm your fears. You pretended not to hear him.
In the car you glanced out the window, looking at endless golden fields and the hunched hairy backs of the green cerros, and you suddenly felt tempted to say nothing, to keep quiet. But the second he hung up you started babbling about the irrigation systems of ancient Mesopotamia and some Mesoamerican cultures. You had no idea what you were actually saying, but you heard all those things in a documentary, and it was very easy for you to remember speech verbatim.
Dad listened with genuine interest, before sharing stories about his childhood growing up in poverty and working at a farm with his father and grandfather, all the irrigation tricks and techniques his grandfather, who was from the O’dam people of Durango, taught them. He told you he began working herding cattle when he was four years old and that, on freezing mornings in la sierra when he overslept because he was just too exhausted, his father would wake him up by beating him with a cane.
There was a small voice coming up between his words like water through the cracks on a sidewalk. It was the voice of a child, confused and rubbed raw by the concrete. It formed different words on top of the ones he spoke. Palimpsest—a world you’ll never learn. It wasn’t an apology, and it wasn’t forgiveness, but you understood, and that alone, at least for a day, allowed you to transcend the hurt. You both greatly enjoyed your afternoon together.
At the farm, Dad watched you plant the new guava trees in front of the farmhouse as he talked to Uncle. The house’s red tiles shone like scales. The iguanas perched on the surrounding gate basking in the lazy midday sun. You half-listened to their conversation and joined Uncle when he chastised Dad because he wanted to pour muriatic acid on the back of his hand to get rid of a wart. You had learned in school that that thing could burn a hole through your hand. You warned Dad, and he relented.
You’ll remember the story Mom once told you about Dad and his first earring. When he was a little boy, around your age, Dad used to have a huge wart on his left earlobe and everyone in the village teased him for it, saying it looked like an earring. One day, fed up with all the stupid jokes, he took a knife and sliced the thing right off in front of the other kids. Mom said he screamed. Dad said he didn’t. Everyone thought he had cut his ear off, even him. Grandmother was not happy when she found out.
They didn’t notice right away, but when you were a toddler mom realized you had a tiny mole in the exact same spot dad used to have. After we met, Dad developed the habit of rubbing his left earlobe between his fingers, searching for that dark dot of flesh, but finding just the barest hint of a scar.
Dad is still inside the convenience store, and you are nodding off in your seat. He ran into a friend and lost track of time. The day we met will be the complete opposite. After that lovely day at the dairy farm, he stopped at the convenience store, and was gone for little more than five minutes. He asked you the same thing, do you want to come with me or stay in the car? You chose to remain inside the car but then glanced out the window and saw that slab of concrete again and decided to go play there. It’ll only be a few minutes.
You felt tired and sleepy, but the joy of having spent a happy, quiet day with Dad again made you bold and a little restless. You stepped out of the car and, unbeknownst to you, ran towards me. You stood on top of the slab of concrete, lifting the edge of your black shorts pretending it was your princess’s dress and you were climbing onto the palace’s balcony to address your subjects. If your father saw you, you could simply say you got bored and wanted to play outside. He didn’t need to know what the game was about.
You were about to open your mouth to deliver your first speech as queen, when suddenly a sandy-colored truck parked right in front of your concrete balcony, obstructing your view of your people. A stout white man with curly black hair stepped out of the truck and walked towards you. He gave you a kind, dimpled smile. You felt instantly nervous.
“Hi,” he said, keeping a respectful distance. His voice was high-pitched and very nasal, like el pato Donald.
“Hi,” you muttered, looking down at your feet.
“What are you doing?” he asked, putting his hands in his pockets. He was wearing flipflops and his hair was still wet, straight out of the shower. You shrugged. “Are you playing on your own? Do you want company?” He was still smiling that dimpled smile. You still didn’t answer, but you considered the idea. It could be fun to have a real subject to play princess with. Your ears burned red. Or prince. Whatever.
“What if I give you something? Will you let me play, then? I have stickers. Do you like stickers? I have Dragon Ball Z stickers. Yu-Gi-Oh stickers. Do you like them?” You didn’t like stickers. But you loved gifts. And having something, even something you didn’t like, was better than not having it at all. The man jingled his car keys inside his pocket, impatient. You nodded.
The man grinned and invited you inside his truck to get the stickers. You thought about choosing the Dragon Ball Z ones—Goku’s figure on a sticker was a lot more attractive to you than Yami’s. After hesitating a second, you climbed inside. It smelled like gasoline.
When the man closed the driver’s door, he suddenly hit his head with his palm and yelled, “¡Qué pendejo!” You laughed at the curse word and instantly liked him better. “I forgot all my stickers at home. A huge bag with every kind you can think of. I live right there.” He pointed down the dirt road’s red tongue where a cluster of trees yawned like a huge dark mouth. “We can go together. You can choose as many as you want, and we’ll be back in no time. No one will notice you are gone.”
You bit your lip, but nodded again, suddenly wanting those stickers more than anything. You had to hurry, though. Dad could come out of the convenience store at any moment, and he would not be happy to see you gone. You didn’t want to receive any more of his anger, so you asked the man to please be quick. The man grinned and nodded, starting the truck. You glanced out the window.
The car door opens, and you jump. Dad finally came back from the store and startled you awake.
“Shhh. We are going home, cachorro. Go back to sleep. We’ll be there in a minute,” he says, and you can feel his joy brush against your own heart like a kiss. He is happy. He is happy and you are the reason. You nod, the crust of sleep in your eyes making the world a blur of light and shapes, as if you were trying to see through helpless tears.
You lean your cheek against your palm and stare out the window, while the purr of the engine lulls you back to sleep. You caught a last glimpse of your concrete balcony, the dirt road littered with bumps. From beneath the empty platform, I wait for you to return.
