The Guardians (7 page)

After
The Communist Manifesto
I went on to the teachings of Mao Ze-dong. My father also had
Das Kapital
and some writings by Lenin and Engels. Everywhere we went to work, following the harvest, the books came with us. El Subcomandante Marcos was a hero of mi papá for so bravely pointing out to the world that the NAFTA agreement was not going to make things better for the Mayan people but worse. If it were not for my mother who said, “No, señor,” he would have gone down to Chiapas to join los Zapatistas in their battle against the government. I was only about five years old, but I remember them arguing about it. “My mother was an indígena,” he'd say. “My own grandfather, who thought he was the last of the great hacendados, threw us off his land because he didn't want us to inherit it.”

I remember tanto, San Pío; even if I am not sixteen years old yet, sometimes I feel like I have lived many lifetimes, not just one. And not just my own. I remember my papá's stories. I remember, too, when I was left with my tía Regina when I was very little. I was so upset, being left behind. I was too small to understand how mis padrecitos were trying to spare me from working in los files. I did not think of it in terms of them having so little food or not enough wood for the stove or things like that once they got back to Chihuahua. I got into reading even more because then I would not have to think about when they were coming back for me. My tía Regina was always so good. It wasn't that. I just missed my mamá. I missed my papá, too. Like I missed how he would pick me up and carry me on his back, especially when I would get tired of working out in the pisca. I would cry like el chavalito that I was. My mother complained about everything. So she would say to me, “This is why you have to go to school, mi'jito. So you don't end up living the life of a burra, like your mamá.” That made me cry. It hurt to think of my mother as a mule. I cried a lot when my father told me she was not coming back for me. I cannot remember a time when I wasn't crying over something gone forever. But I am a man now almost, and I know that tears are useless.

Mañana I promise, Santo apreciado, no reading, only meditating on virtues of penance.

Your most undeserving discípulo

MIGUEL

We outgrew each other. That's what happened in my marriage. People talk about how a couple is supposed to grow to keep the relationship strong. Well, Crucita grew in her direction and I in mine. I got more involved in grassroots organizing and spent less time at home. She found comfort with a bubba preacher named Prescott from Silver City.

All I gotta say is I hope he does not move into my house.

“It's not your house anymore,” my ex says. I may have moved out, but I still think I have something to say about it.

“That's always been your problem, Mike,” she says. “You always got something to say about everything.”

I shared the rather shameful news of my wife's infidelity with Regina, who somehow has managed to take over most of my life. Actually, she's not that kind of woman. I don't know what kind of woman she is but she's not the clinging type—that's clear. But that's how women do it. They sneak up on you. Before you know it, you're acting like a big tonto over them. Then, they got you hitched. Next thing you know, you're paying taxes on a house you don't even get to live in anymore. As for finding Redhead's brother, I said I'd help. He sounded like a righteous man, so I am sorry to even think it, but for my money, he's been long dead.

My therapist thinks I'm afflicted with a “narcissist personality disorder”—
possibly.
He didn't actually come out and say it. I snuck a glance at his notes one day during a session. He was getting over a bad cold and ran out of the room in the middle of a coughing fit. I kind of peeked into my file that he left on his chair. Great. So, that's the verdict, I thought,
not as sure of myself at that point, as he thought I
might
be, and no longer having all that much confidence in my therapist, either.

It was Crucita's idea that I get counseling.

Maybe I
am
self-absorbed or maybe my affliction is paranoia but I felt I got no pity from Regina regarding my cheating wife. When a man comes out looking duped, women tend to feel sorry for him. They view him as a potentially good guy. Instead, she looked at me with those deep-set eyes of hers, which she seems to not even be conscious of what they could do to a man, and said, “Come on, Miguel, you know that everyone at the school thinks you're a Casanova. You've gone out with every single woman who's worked there.”

Every single woman but her, that was.

Now that I'm a divorced man I feel free to date whomever I please. But a Casanova? Ouch. Every time I start going out with a nice girl, she gets serious on me right away. Crucita was a nice girl. A nice girl who sprung on me she was pregnant just as I was about to apply for grad school.

When I was in college I used to write poems about Zapata, Pancho Villa, Che Guevara—all my revolutionary heroes. “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” That's not a quote of mine but of Emiliano Zapata's. My own poetry stunk. Crucita followed me around everywhere. Girls love poets. You say, “I'm a poet,” and they say right away, “Write a poem for me,” or worse, “Write a poem about me.”

Secretly, Crucita wanted me to give up all that “nonsense”—not just calling myself a poet but also my “radicalism.” She said I should buy us a big house and join the country club—spend my time golfing, her doing charity work. When I refused to live like that, she settled with living in Sunland Park next door to her folks.

Her family convinced her that my teaching was a “noble profession” and even my involvement in community issues was nothing to snub her nose at. Maybe the kids gave her some satisfaction but I sure didn't. Then she became a born-again and gave her life meaning. That and her part-time crusade to end domestic violence everywhere.

My own activism keeps me going, especially on those days when you question every decision for yourself that you've ever made. I'm one of the few people around here who still calls himself Chicano. A lot of people don't like that word. They don't get it. They think it means gangbanging. It's like one of those outdated labels that most people never understood
and now everybody hates and has no use for. Like
feminist.
Half the women I know don't like that word, either, but when you ask them what it means, they say they don't really know.

Things just keep closing in by the minute. One day the two-party system is gonna sound obsolete and even a bad idea. Mark my words.

GABO

Mi Más Querido Santo,

One of the greatest favors for which I feel so indebted to our Lord is that His Majesty permits me to unburden myself to his servant in heaven. But today, Padre Pío, allow me to tell you about un regalo that He has brought us around here. Father Juan Bosco told me that los Hermanos Franciscanos encourage friendship. For this reason, I am most grateful that we now have others to share our humble vidas with. By we, I mean mi tía and myself.

Sometimes I feel my aunt's loneliness like un león feroz slowly coming toward us from far away. One day I'll have to leave her and then who will she have? Everyone needs familia. And when your familia goes away or when they die on you, then a good friend around helps. She always mentions la Señora Uriel, but they never see each other. “Too busy with work and life,” is what my tía has said about never seeing her only amiga. But my tía Regina has finally made herself a new friend in el Chongo Man. We know little about the schoolteacher but I sense in my heart he is well-meaning, even if he goes about it clumsily.

My best friend is Jesse Arellano.

(He is
not
well-meaning, Su Reverencia. Pero that is why I consider him such a great gift from Our Lord. He stands in need of God's consolation. Please keep him in your prayers, Santito.)

“Jesse Arellano as in
the
Arellanos, ese,” he said to me when we first met on the basketball court at the Catholic high school in Santa Teresa. Being a private school, it has a very decent basketball court. Santa

Teresa is the town between Cabuche and El Paso. It also shares la frontera with México. The Santa Teresa border isn't used for a lot except the business of the narcotraficantes. The sheriff's deputies drive around and harass us sometimes because we are out there playing on what they say is private property But usually they leave us alone when they see we are only trying to throw a few hoops.

I looked at Jesse like he was talking to me in Greek.

“What up?” he said. “You not from around here or somethin’? My older brother is El Toro Arellano… . You know, the guy who helped start los Palominos back in the day? He's doing time over there in La Tuna now… . Are you really that out of it, man, ¿o qué, ese?”

My new friend was not
exactly
claiming he was one of the notorious Arellanos from Nuevo Laredo. Everyone along the borderlands has heard about esos narcos. He just left it open so that you might come to that conclusion yourself. Obviously, los Palominos counted on people being stupid. But one thing seemed obvious, Padre Pío. The Palominos were penny-ante gangbangers compared to los carteles grandes that reign over the borderlands.
(Penny ante.
I read that in
The Jungle
by Upton Sinclair. It is one of the libros Mr. Vigil passed on to me. But penny ante does not mean the Palominos are not locos.) Jesse forgave my ignorance regarding his status, he said, because I was so good at basketball. (I almost always win.) We have started meeting there now and then when I have time between my job and school and Jesse has time between his penny-ante activities.

He has put aside the fact that I have plans on becoming un hermano of the Church. To him, that makes me a “nerd” or I have a lot of nerve. (He laughed after saying that because he thought it was funny that it rhymed.)

One day, maybe to test out which it was, Jesse slammed the ball right at my face. Blood gushed out of my nose. “It was an acci—” he started to say, sniggering like it was not. Next thing I knew, Santito, he was pleading for me to let go when I had his neck locked between my thighs. (I learned that movida at school, trying to get on the wrestling team.) After that, there were no more accidental slam balls from my new best friend.

Another time he said, “More than anything, I'm in awe of a guy who is voluntarily gonna be without a woman his whole life. Never. Not even once. Do you have to be a virgin before you go in?” he asked, tossing the ball from one of his boxy hands to the other. “ 'Cause if you
don't, you better get you some before you do.” When my face went red Jesse really cracked up.

I am not sure what the big deal is about sex, Padre Pío. I know I might be saying that because I do not have experience, but that is not the point. When you give yourself to Our Lord, desires of the flesh must be sacrificed. (
… And be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.
Corinthians Two, Chapter Six, Verse Seventeen.) “Not just sex,” I told mi amigo, “but you must keep away from alcohol, drugs, parties, all kinds of loud music, and cars with fancy hydraulics like yours and which you are so proud of. And while I am at it, you will not have use for sinful pride, either. You will have God to fulfill you.” I tried to explain it like that to Jesse with all the conviction I carry in my heart, Santo.

Afterward, he just stared at me, like he does a lot. One of his eyes wanders, so it is not easy to tell if he is giving you a hard look or someone else. Then he spits out a big wad of phlegm and you move back anyway. “Man,” he said finally, “you are really weird.”

As long as he does not try to get me in the gang. All we do is shoot hoops. And talk or “chill,” as he calls it. He tells me all about his “cool” world. “Sex and drugs, man. That's what counts, vato,” he says; and then he spits.

Jesse himself knew a girl, in the biblical sense, when he was only eleven and was brought into los Palominos. He said his brother, El Toro, had been his sponsor. “You need someone to vouch for you,” he said. Not just anyone could join the gang. “You gotta have what it takes,” he says all the time. What it takes, from what he has told me, Padre Pío, is a wish for a life in prison or worse.