Muchacho (15 page)

I know Beecher was just joking about me being a teacher, but all the way driving back to T or C, I kept remembering what she said and having a little picture in my mind of me being a teacher. I would let people write whatever they wanted to, just like Beecher did, and if they said they didn’t care if they graduated, I would make them read
The Four Agreements
so they could learn how to think impeccable thoughts. I don’t think I would ever be a teacher, but a lot of things have happened lately that I never would of believed if you told me they were going to happen, so I’m not making any promises to myself. Except I did make one kind of promise, though. I decided that I’m never going to jail unless it’s one of those
situations where the cops bust you just for being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I had so many things to think about after that visit and I had a lot of time to think on the way back because Tío likes to listen to music while he’s driving, so he doesn’t care if you don’t talk to him. He was listening to this cassette he bought off a guy who works at Mail Boxes Etc. who is in this band called Caliente! The music was pretty good so we didn’t say anything all the way across 70 East from Alamogordo past White Sands and almost to Cruces. Right when we started to go through that pass where the Organ Mountains start to look real sharp and pretty, Tío turned down the music and said, “You know, Eddie, it’s okay if you’re still a virgin.”

At first, I thought I was tripping because why would Tío say something like that when we never even said one word about sex in the whole time I been at his house. He could have figured it out from reading me and Lupe’s letters, but I knew he didn’t read them. I was going to say, “What makes you think I’m a virgin?” but I didn’t want to hear the answer so I didn’t say anything. Then Tío said, “Sorry if I stepped on your toes there, bud. Just wanted you to know you aren’t the Lone Ranger even if you think you are. Most of the guys your age who brag about all the pussy they’re getting aren’t getting any or they would keep their mouths shut so other guys won’t go after their women.”

I still didn’t know what to say. Me and Lupe got real close a couple times, but we never had official sex because she’s
Catholic so she couldn’t have an abortion and if she had a baby and we got married then she would end up hating me after she got tired of getting up in the middle of the night to feed a baby who was crying when she should have been in college learning how to be the doctor who delivers the babies.

Tío probably figured he was right since I didn’t say anything because he said, “Take your time,
mijo.
Take your time.” He played a little drums on the steering wheel, then he turned down the music even lower. “I know you think you and Lupe will love each other for the rest of your life and maybe you will. But your hormones are in control right now, so you could start confusing lust and love. Not that you can’t have both, but at your age, lust takes priority.” He sounded just like Beecher when he said that. I started thinking maybe I should introduce them because Beecher is the only lady I know who is as smart as Tío and she eats the same kind of weird healthy food like he does and I bet she doesn’t watch TV, neither.

“Don’t worry,” I told Tío. “Me and Lupe aren’t taking any chances, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Lupe reminds me of your mother, you know,” Tío said, which made me wonder if maybe he drank some beers out back with Papi before we left. “Your mother was the smartest girl in the whole school. Did you know that? Sharp as a razor blade. When she started dating your father, I was so jealous. I wished I had found her first. She was so hot she sizzled.” Tío licked his finger and stuck it on his leg and made a fat-in-the-
fire sound. “She could have gone to college. She could have been the first woman president. She could have done anything, but she married your dad and then you came along and then Letty and Juanito.” I didn’t say anything because I was still trying to picture my mother as a hot babe genius instead of a old lady in a hairnet dishing up macaronis and
queso
for little kids in the school cafeteria or roasting chiles in the kitchen at home, but Tío probably thought he hurt my feelings because he quick looked over at me and said, “Hey. She loves you. I’m not saying she’s not happy. But I always wonder if she might have been even happier if she had the chance to fly as high as her wings could have taken her.”

And I started thinking of all the times I would come into the house and my mother would be standing in the living room staring at the television except it wasn’t turned on, or else she would be standing in the middle of the kitchen not even cooking and if I asked her what was she thinking, she would jump a little bit like I scared her and I would have to ask her again and she would say, “Oh, nothing.” And I wondered if maybe she had been thinking that her life was nothing, except her life isn’t nothing because if it wasn’t for her, I would have been a pretty bad criminal or at least dropped out of school and my father would have probably had to go to jail for losing his temper and punching the wrong guy. But maybe saving a couple of loser men and cooking the best chile rellenos in the neighborhood doesn’t feel like something so big to a woman with a brain as sharp as a razor blade.

That’s when I decided not to ask Lupe to marry me until I’m twenty-one and a big success, or at least a medium-size one. I made the intention to keep on loving Lupe but not hold her back even one little bit. I’ll try to go to college with her but if she gets a scholarship to some big fancy school, I will tell her go ahead and be a doctor and open her wings and fly. And I’ll go to NMSU and I’ll keep writing her one letter a day and I’ll write her a bunch of poems, too, enough to make a whole book. And I’ll get a good job and make a real nice house so after Lupe is done flying, she’ll have a place to make a nest if she wants to. Who knows—I might even do a little bit of flying myself.

E
VERY ONCE IN A WHILE
, P
API TRIES TO HAVE A MAN-TO-MAN
with me, but he doesn’t try too hard because it’s usually Mami’s idea and we both know it. Plus, he had a way different life from me so he doesn’t usually get it why I do what I do. Like for example him and his brothers grew up on a ranch over by Portales which is practically Texas, so they all dress like old-time
caballeros
with jeans real long that bunch up around their ankles so when they sit in the saddle, they won’t look like
mensos
wearing high-waters. And they wear those thick cotton shirts that you have to iron after you wash them, and they’re too hot for the desert but they keep out the bugs and if they ride past a mesquite bush too close, their arms don’t get all scratched up.

Papi’s always telling me to tuck in my shirt, but for one thing, my shirts are too long to tuck in and if I did tuck them in, I’d look like a
gordo
even though I’m skinny because my pants would be all full of shirt. Or I would have to buy those different shirts like Harvey Castro wears that are real short like a girl shirt so you can tuck them in and wear a necktie and try to look like you sell insurance. If I went around looking like that, I’d get my ass kicked so fast because I’m not Harvey Castro and he isn’t me. If Harvey Castro wore a big shirt, he’d look like Halloween or something, and he would lose his cool just like that. But I can’t explain all that to Papi because he’s too tired to sit down and listen to a real long answer. So when he asks me why don’t I get a better attitude or at least tuck in my shirt, I just shrug my shoulders and look at my shoes for a minute until he says never mind what’s the point in talking to somebody who never listens.

When I was over visiting Rosablanca, I could tell that Papi was trying to make the connection with me and he even acted like it was his own idea. The night before I had to go back to T or C to take my exams, Papi knocked on the door to my room which was the first time he ever knocked. He usually just barges into whatever room he wants because it’s his house and he built it with his own two hands with money he busted his ass to earn so if he wants to walk into a room, he’ll walk into it and you better shut up.

When Papi knocked, I was so surprised I didn’t say anything for a couple seconds, just looked at him. Usually I don’t
look at him real close because I already know what he looks like. But this time, I looked at him like he was some guy on the street and he looked a little bit nervous which made me feel a little bit nervous, too.

“Come on in,” I said, but then he did come in and there we were, standing too close to each other and no place to sit because my room is so small. I went over and shoved all the clothes off the little wood chair in the corner and Papi sat down on it which made him look even more nervous than he did when he was standing up. I went over and sat down on the bed and tried to look Papi in the eye but if you look a man like Papi in the eye for too long, he usually thinks you want to hit him, so I stopped looking at him and pretended to look out the window.

Papi coughed a couple times and then he tried to have a man-to-man about the bees and the birds, but he was about ten years too late. When I told Papi that he didn’t have to fill me in on women and sex and all that stuff, because Primo already told me everything I need to know, Papi looked kind of worried for a minute, but then he smiled.

“Well, Enrique probably knows more what he’s talking about than I do when it comes to women,” Papi said.

We both laughed like he was right, but after Papi left I started thinking he was wrong. Mami loves him so much that sometimes she gets up right in the middle of eating dinner and goes over and kisses him on top of his head. My mother is one of those women who you are lucky if you even get to
know them. But if you are a man who gets to marry them and they’re still
enamorada
with you after almost twenty years, then you must know something about women.

Primo probably didn’t tell me exactly the same stuff that Papi would have, but he filled in all the blanks. After he explained the different body parts and what they do, he filled me in on female psychology, too. Like one thing girls hate so much is if you ask them for their phone number and then don’t call them. They get all mad because they think you just wanted to see if you could get their number. They don’t know that the reason you don’t call them is maybe you don’t got a cool car to pick them up in or any money to take them out someplace nice or you aren’t too good at making conversation with girls who are so pretty that you can’t concentrate when you look at them.

“It’s better if you give them your cell phone number,” Primo says. “That way, they can call you up and flirt with you and stuff, but you never ask them out so they think you’re too cool for them or else you got a jealous girlfriend who will slit their throat or something. And if they ask you out, you don’t say anything for a long time and they start thinking that maybe they aren’t as hot as they thought they were. Then pretty soon they stop calling you. Or you just stop taking their calls and they get mad at you and tell all the other girls what a macho jerk you are which makes the other girls want you even more.”

When I first got Lupe for a girlfriend, Primo kept telling
me to keep my options open and not get chained to one girl, even if she was hot, because she would make that chain a little bit shorter every day until the next thing you know, you can’t even take a piss without permission.

“I’m not on any chain,” I told Primo, and he said, “You keep on thinking that, dude. Enjoy your illusions.”

I don’t think I’m illusioning anything. Lupe and me respect each other and if I need to go do something by myself, I do it and she doesn’t say anything. She’s too busy doing homework and learning to play the piano and doing yoga exercises so she can stay in touch with her peaceful center to worry about what I’m doing every single second. Primo said that proves she doesn’t really care about me. He said if a girl really loves you, she’ll get jealous and pitch a fit if you don’t act like you’re thinking about her all the time, even when you’re sleeping. She’ll make you check in every twenty-four hours like she’s your parole officer. And if she catches you checking out the
chichis
on some other girl, she won’t let you touch hers for two days just to punish you.

“But Lupe isn’t the jealous type,” I told Primo.

“All women are the jealous type,” he said. “It’s in their hormones. If Lupe isn’t jealous, then she probably has another boyfriend. Or maybe she secretly likes girls.”

I told Primo he was full of shit, but for a little while after that, I started watching Lupe and checking out how she acted if I looked at another girl. And I watched to see did her face change when she looked at some real popular guy who has
a hot car and a wallet full of twenties. I even smiled at Silvia Miranda one day right in front of Lupe to see what she would do.

Lupe and I were eating lunch on the playground behind the tennis courts at school and Silvia came out and sat down on one of the weird old swings and started kicking her feet to try to make it go. Silvia looked over at us and I smiled at her and I checked out Lupe in the corner of my eye. She just took another bite of her chocolate chip cookie like it was nothing. She even waved at Silvia. One of those little finger wiggles like girls do when they see one of their friends.

“You know her?” I asked Lupe.

“Not really,” Lupe said, “but she looks nice. Do you know her?”

“Yeah, I guess. I been going to school with her since we were little kids.”

Lupe didn’t say anything else and she didn’t ask any questions about Silvia even though I thought she would because Silvia is real pretty. Not beautiful like Lupe, but pretty enough that she could be a model or a movie star if she doesn’t turn out to be a
gordita
like her mother. All the Miranda girls start out looking real good but something happens to them when they turn eighteen. They puff up like
sopapillas.

“I guess you aren’t the jealous type, huh?” I said to Lupe. She quick looked at Silvia and back at me.