By Tomas Baiza

“¿Dónde chingaos está? He was supposed to be here hours ago.”

All afternoon she stalks the house, hooded eyes scanning every room for some invisible threat. Days like these I make damn sure to stay out of her way.

I eavesdropped on the negotiations that had dragged on for a couple weeks. Final terms were agreed upon just last night while I bled in my bedroom. Bill would pick me up the next morning, Saturday, at ten. I would stay the night with him in Santa Cruz and be home by five p.m. Sunday, in time for dinner.

The non-negotiables, Mom said, you good-for-nothing gabacho: There will be no alcohol, no visits with buddies, no leaving your fourteen year-old son in the van while you’re in some bar, no dropping him off with acquaintances or dumping him alone at the apartment while you ‘take care of errands.’ 

To sum up, there would be absolutely no reason for concern about Bill’s conduct or my safety or Mom would be sure to use every resource at her disposal to make things right. And did he remember that she’s a social worker who could bring down on him the full weight of the system to protect her son and make his life a living hell?

It’s past noon. My half-sister Cami spent the night at a friend’s house to make sure she was gone when Bill showed up. Sitting and sweating in the kitchen, I force myself to not mess with my ear. It throbs like someone’s blasting blood into it with a bicycle pump.

“Qué pensabas when you decided to do that? You really want to look like one of those thug pandilleros your sister has chasing after her?” My mother shakes her head at me from the living room. “Serve you right if your ear fell off, pendejo,” she says and turns to gaze out the front window.

 •   •   •

“You can do this,” I whispered, rocking on the edge of the bed.

The ice cube rested on my thigh, a dark water stain spreading across my jeans as it melted. Between my index finger and thumb, I tugged on my half-frozen earlobe. In the other hand, my mother’s sewing needle. I brought the business end up to eye-level. The needle’s tip glinted in the light from the bare bulb above my head.

“Si se puede, motherfucker.” I closed my eyes and pushed.

•   •   •

Screw Cami for being right. If I had really thought it through, I wouldn’t have pierced my ear until after Bill’s visit.

Mom steps back from the window, chin high. “Ahí ‘stá.” She holds me with her eyes and thrusts a hand into her purse. “Sale, pues, it’s been a little bit since the last time, but you know how this goes. I’m giving you fifty dollars. Come home with fifty dollars. If you don’t come home with fifty dollars, it’s because you spent it to come home.”

She pauses to search my face for understanding and heaves a sigh. “Just come home.”

 •   •   •

Give me a fight in the cafeteria with Roberto, Manuel, or DeAndre. Any. Fucking. Day. This was worse than getting my nose broken and reset.

When the needle was about halfway through, I collapsed onto my bed. I think I let out a whimper.

“‘Ey! What’s going on in there?” my mom called out from the other side of the door.

“Yuck, Mom. Don’t ask,” I heard Cami say. “Let him have his privacy. At least the hormonal little pig thought to close the door.”

“I am NOT jerking off, Cami!” I yelped. A warm rivulet crept down my neck. “But you’ll be happy to know there’s some blood all up in here.”

“¡Guácala, sinvergüenza!” Mom yelled from the other side of the door. Several heavy steps and a bang from farther down the hall. No one slammed doors like my mom.

I cursed and gave it one last push. The needle exited my earlobe with a moist pop and jabbed into my neck. “Ay, SHIIIT!” I screamed.

“Fucking PERVERT!” Cami bellowed out in the hallway.

I lay on my bed and listened to my mom argue with someone over the phone in her bedroom. Bill, I thought. I wondered if he was still coming for me tomorrow.

A half-hour later I stumbled out of my bedroom, sweaty and triumphant. After the needle, fitting the ruby stud I’d bought at the mall was a piece of cake. Every inch from the top of my head to my shoulder was an electrical storm of pain, but it was worth it. I smiled to myself as I sauntered to the kitchen for more ice. I’m gonna look so chingón at school on Monday if I can get this swelling down.

At the kitchen table, Cami sat holding a bottle of Pepsi to the side of her face. Her mouth curled into an evil grin. “I hope you had your fun.”

I leaned into the freezer and turned my head to glare at her, the cold mist soothing my ruined ear. “You seriously think that’s how I sound when I’m wrestling the priest?” I said, grabbing an ice tray.

Cami’s expression was exactly what I’d hoped for. “Wrestling the pr—? Shiiiiit, Dani, you are going straight to hell.”

I dropped the ice tray hard onto the counter and fished out a cube. My head exploded with new pain when it touched my ear. Only the smugness of grossing out Cami kept me from fainting.

“I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into, dumbass,” Cami said and took a sip from her bottle.

“What, you mean how awesome I look?” My earlobe howled, but no way I was letting it show in front of Cami.

She shook her head and stood up slowly. “You’re so cool now we’re gonna have to call you culero. Look, I’m spending the night at Leticia’s so I don’t have to see your Caucasian-ass dad when he comes to get you tomorrow, but good luck explaining that chingadera in your ear.”

I froze, the ice cube slipped from my fingers and skittered across the kitchen floor. Cami bore into me with those huge brown eyes. “Bill’s coming tomorrow,” I whispered.

“Yup,” she nodded. “And you know how he feels about maricas.”

Queers?

“Wh—what?” I stammered.

“For what it’s worth,” Cami said, gently fingering the ruby stud, “I thinkit looks muy sexy.”

 •   •   •

I open the front door right when Bill flicks a cigarette butt into the pot of geraniums my mom keeps on the steps. He stands a safe distance off the porch, his red beard a little grayer than the last time I saw him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I answer. My face goes hot which makes my ear tingle.

“Where’s your mother?”

“Asleep,” I lie.

Bill nods and looks me up and down. “You ready?”

I up-nod him, like I would some random dude on the street. It feels weird and the frown on his face tells me he senses it, too. I grab my Converse bag and shut the door behind me. There are no words exchanged when I pass him on the way to the van, but I can feel his eyes.

“You’ve gotten big,” he says from behind.

His van, a white Ford Econoline, is exactly the same as last time I sat in it. The odor of unfiltered Camels and canned shoestring potatoes fills the cab. The engine shroud between the seats doubles as his mobile desk where he keeps his notebooks, pens, extra packs of cigarettes, a stolen Denny’s ashtray, and a hand-written copy of a poem the paper says was written by some dude named Robert Burns.

We cam na here to view your warks,
In hopes to be mair wise,
But only, lest we gang to hell,
it may be nae surprise.

Every time I sit in this van, I pick up the powder blue notebook paper and read that poem and try to connect it to Bill, to this man I understand is my father. What is it about those verses that resonates with him? Does it have anything to do with me? Every time I return the poem to its place behind the ashtray, I have more questions than answers.

Bill climbs into the driver’s seat and I sit quietly waiting for him to start the engine. If it’s anything like the last couple of visits, I’ll read the Burns poem for a few minutes and probably he won’t try to small talk until we get to 280 South.

We keep not moving and I start to get nervous.

“Hey,” Bill says.

I look up from the poem.

“What’s that?” he points and flicks my left ear with his middle finger. It’s hard and cigarette-stained and it feels like he clubbed me across the side of the face.

“Nothing,” I grunt. Pain lances down my neck. Don’t let it show, dude.

“Looks like an earring.”

I nod and look back down at the poem written on wrinkled notebook paper and marked with dried coffee rings. Bill blows out a long smoky hiss through his nose. The air in the cab grows thick and I tell myself that I’m big enough now. Maybe I can’t take him, but I can at least make it out of the van in one piece.

“What does that mean?” he says slowly.

“What does what mean?”

“That,” he says, jabbing his finger at my ear. “What’s it mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just an earring.”

“That’s not a Mexican kid thing, is it?”

“A what?” This time I look him in the eyes. They’re my eyes, only they’re icy blue. I might even admit that they were handsome if they weren’t his.

“Never mind,” he says. “The only guys I know who have earrings are hippies or faggots, and you don’t dress like a hippy.”

“How do I dress?”

“Like some kid from the East Side.”

All I can think to do is stare at him. The van’s perfectly silent, like we’re each waiting for the other to do something important.

“I should go back inside,” I say. We sit in the quiet cab.

“If you say so,” Bill shrugs.

I wait for him to change his mind, to give me some sign that he wants me to stay. To explain to me this fucking poem in my hands. Nothing.

Carefully, I slip my fingers to the top of the page and pull. The Burns poem tears neatly in two. I square the halves and tear them again, and again, until the powder blue page is little more than confetti. The pieces fall onto the seat as I climb from the van.

The deadbolt at the front door clicks loudly and I listen to the van’s exhaust note fade down the street.

In the kitchen, I sit at the table and hold an ice cube to my ear. I let the tears come, but it’s okay this time because I’m alone and no one can see. The price you pay for cool, I tell myself.

In my pocket is a wad of bills. If I cry hard enough, maybe, just maybe, Mom will let me keep the fifty dollars.

---

Tomas Baiza was born and raised in San José, California, and now lives in Boise, Idaho, where he is currently studying creative writing at Boise State University. Tomas’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Parhelion, Writers In The Attic, Obelus, In Parentheses, Meniscus, Rigorous, The Meadow, Peatsmoke, PANK, and elsewhere.