It’s the summer of 2005. I’m sitting on the living room floor watching Unsolved Mysteries and nursing a gallon of Tampico juice when Mom, my 4-year-old brother Luke, and stepdad Jeff trudge inside the front door. Two strangers trail behind them: grown-looking kids wearing giant red T-shirts, creased khaki pants, red canvas belts, Nike Cortez sneakers with fat red laces, and dark Locs sunglasses. It’s nighttime. A black cat is rubbing against my leg.
We get all kinds of randos at our house. Mom, a 50-year-old Bible thumper, invites Mormons in for decaf coffee and tries to convert them, and picks up homeless folks from the Target parking lot, but these guests are different: teenagers who dress and walk and breathe cool, like Tampico gushes through their veins. They’re half a foot shorter than Jeff but colossal compared to Mom. I’m Haley Joel Osment on a good day: five foot four, a buck twenty, 15 years old going on 10. Even a Pentecostal white boy can tell these dudes are gang-affiliated. We live in Stockton, California, hailed by Forbes as the most miserable city in America, mainly due to gang violence. Foreclosures, unemployment, illiteracy. Carjacking is public transit out here.
Mom’s new recruits swagger toward the living room and sink into our sectional cushions. Their sweat-stained T-shirts look like Rorschach tests. Mom corrals her long brown hair into a bun and introduces them with a smirk, her hazel eyes big as martini olives—she knows she’s hit the mother lode of the soul-saving sweepstakes. “Hey hun. This is Daniel, one of my high school students, and his friend Sisqó. He goes to my school, too. They just need a place to stay for a while.”
I have so many questions. Are they Bloods? How long is “a while”? Did she say Sisqó? Is he named after the “Thong Song” guy?
“Sup,” I say, with the customary sup head nod, squeezing every ounce of bass from my scratchy pubescent vocal cords.
“Sup,” say Daniel and Sisqó, flipping their sunglasses over their heads. Daniel’s black cat jumps on his lap. Her name is Blacky.
I join Mom on the sectional and pray that MAMA’S BOY isn’t lipsticked on my forehead in big red letters. Luke scampers to the computer room to play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on my PlayStation 2. Jeff, the gruff wannabe cowboy Mom married five years ago, retires to his La-Z-Boy. He’s been walking with the Lord for close to a decade and running from demons his entire life. When they catch up, he slumps in his recliner and drowns out the voices with fiery sermons from megachurch revivalists.
“Whatchoo watchin’?” says Daniel, pointing at the TV. His braided ponytail hangs over one shoulder like a pet snake. A red eagle tattoo covers his wrist.
“Um, Unsolved Mysteries. I don’t know why it’s on Lifetime. It’s not a chick show or anything. It’s about murder and stuff. We can watch something else—”
“Oh freal? Nah, I’m cool with this right here. This some G shit.”
“Yeahhh, this that real shit,” says Sisqó, scratching his impressive lot of facial foliage. Like Daniel, his S-words are smooth and feathery, his eyes glassy and bloodshot. He and Daniel are probably just tired.
Blacky sniffs our carpet dotted with every flavor of Shasta soda. Robert Stack, host of Unsolved Mysteries, delivers his ghastly voiceover as 1980s reenactors comb through a crime scene. When it cuts to commercial, Lifetime airs a barrage of feminine hygiene products. We stroke our chins, thinking about whodunit. Was it the husband? The jealous ex? A random passerby? Me and Mom and the glassy-eyed gangsters, sitting on opposite sides of the sectional, watching ads for Dove shampoo and genital herpes medication. On the other side, a mystery awaits.
Within days, three new kids move into our house: Les, Daniel’s younger teenage brother; DC, Daniel’s older brother; and Stephanie, DC’s girlfriend. They don’t share much about themselves. Daniel’s 17, like Sisqó. Native American. His mom dipped out to Oklahoma and left him and his brothers behind. Still, I’m pretty sure we’re homies—we always travel as a pack. The homies call it mobbin’. Mom shuttles us to and from Walmart, Taco Bell, Circle K, Blockbuster, the mall, while Sisqó—who previously lived in an abandoned car—rides shotgun in our silver minivan and slaps 2Pac and Biggie and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony songs for us to rap to and mariachi songs for us to yelp to. You would think Mom’s favorite rapper is Methodist Man, but she’s cool with explicit rap as long as F-words, S-words, and N-words add to the greater artistic vision.
My stepdad Jeff doesn’t mob with us. He stays home and listens to Christian radio in the dark. Christianity is the only thing he and Mom have in common; that and a fondness for domestic violence. An argument over Jeff looking at other women or what Jesus wrote in the sand or what God did on the eighth day can end in slapping, kicking and scratching, choke-slamming the Yahweh out of one another. Afterward, Mom will blast Sarah McLachlan while she journals in one of her notebooks and pretends “Sweet Surrender” is a song about surrendering to Jesus, not about crumbling in the arms of some dude.
Mom and Jeff can’t throw down around the homies, though. No wonder Jeff doesn’t like them.
One afternoon we turtle down Pacific Avenue on our way to Barnes & Noble. A renegade blow dryer of hot air whistles through the open windows. The Stockton heat is late ’90s like boy bands and frosted tips, turning the teeth of our seatbelts into branding irons. It feels hotter inside the van because the homies—Stephanie’s a gang member too—are “flamed up.” All-red attire.
Daniel taught me the basics the other day as we sat in the garage and he smoked a blunt. “We’re Norteños. Norte for short,” he said, drawing an XIV with his red gel pen. Fourteen is their favorite number because N is the fourteenth letter of the alphabet.
“Why do you wear red? Are ya’ll, like, Bloods?” I felt comfortable asking these questions now that we’d mobbed to Walmart and watched Unsolved Mysteries together.
Daniel laughed, coughing on his smoke. “Nah, nah, different strokes. We rep the Norfside. Norf Cali. Norf Stockton. Norf everything.”
Mom pulls into the Barnes & Noble parking lot. Daniel cups his mouth with both hands and yells a “Nor-tayyy” as Woodie, a Norteño rapper they listen to religiously, booms from the van’s stereo. Like Woodie, the homies hate Sureños, a.k.a. the blue guys. Luke, headbanging his blonde bowl cut to the beat, picked a great day to wear his navy Blue’s Clues polo.
Mom swoops a primo parking spot near the entrance, prompting another car to flatline its horn then honk in pissy little spurts. A librarian-looking lady slams her door and screams at Mom’s driver-side window and points finger daggers.
Northside gangbang, red flags hang, yells Woodie, our official spokesperson.
The van doors pop open. Five pairs of Nike Cortez sneakers smack the hot asphalt. Daniel, Sisqó, DC, Stephanie, and Les cross their arms and cock their heads and brandish mean-mugs that could melt a stick of Country Crock. Librarian Lady clutches her chest, as if she’s discovered the entire A-L Fiction stack is unalphabetized, and staggers back to her car.
After she peels off, we swagger inside Barnes & Noble with our chests out like state champs and order a round of Strawberry Crème Frappuccinos.
Mom adds a new wrinkle to her Jesus Is My Homeboy crusade: if the homies want to stay with us, they must attend church twice on Sundays AND the youth service on Wednesday nights. Going to church also permits them to smoke weed across the street from our house, though they already light up in the garage and backyard when Mom and Jeff aren’t home. Even Blacky gets high, with help from Daniel and Sisqó.
The night of their first youth service, Stephanie and the boys take forever to get ready. Hair braided. XXL T-shirts ironed. Khakis creased. Ears punctured with faux-diamond-studded earrings. We pile into the van, a hotbox of Axe body spray, and head to church with Jeff following in his blue truck. Sisqó, again riding shotgun, soundtracks the commute with Norte music. Woodie is coming to youth group too.
Mom drops Luke off at his Little Rainbows class and skips the adult Bible study with Jeff to join me and the homies at youth group. The air in the sanctuary is crisp. Multicolored stage lights wash over pews of teenagers, clear to the last row, where the homies are slouched and cross-armed and cool so I’m slouched and cross-armed and, I hope, cool. Mom is seated next to me, smiling like a mad scientist.
During worship, the homies stand—at Mom’s request—but refuse to sing along. I follow suit because I don’t want to be excommunicated by the crew. They’re barely awake when the last song ends and the spiky-haired youth pastor ambles across the stage gripping the microphone from the bottom like a standup comedian.
“You know . . . before I start with my message tonight, I want to try something different. I really feel the presence of God in here. So, let’s do this: I want to invite you to come up and share what God means to you. Anyone. Come on stage right now and tell us how much you love Jesus.”
The red falcon tattoo on Daniel’s hand soars toward the steeple.
Mom and I look at each other with Macaulay Culkin mouths.
“What is he doing?” I whisper.
“This can’t be good,” she whispers back.
The pastor points at Daniel, who stands up and motions to the others to do the same.
“Oh, well look at this. I don’t believe I’ve seen you guys before. Is this your first time?”
They nod.
“Wonderful! Come on up and share your testimony.”
A flamed-up Daniel, Sisqó, and Stephanie approach the stage with Les and DC in tow. Whispers crackle through the audience.
“Alrighty,” the pastor says, “who wants to go first?”
Daniel’s red falcon ascends.
“Great! Tell us your name and why you love Jesus.”
Daniel snatches the mic.
“What’s good. My name is Daniel . . . AND I FUCKIN’ LOVE JESUS SO FUCKIN’ MUCH GODDAMMIT!”
The pastor is cryogenic, blinking his eyes.
I can’t believe I’m laughing. I can’t believe Mom is laughing.
Sisqó grabs the microphone from Daniel.
“GOD FUCKIN’ DAMMIT! I FUCKIN’ LOVE JESUS TOO!”
The pastor seizes the traumatized microphone as the homies double over and laugh and shout “NOR-TAYYY!” and dap each other up. He gestures a clapping motion to the stunned crowd. Scattered claps pop in the dark like crossfire as the homies return to the pew. Mom looks down the row and shakes her head, smirking. “You guys . . .”
No rebuke. No weeping and gnashing of teeth. Even Mom is now charmed by the homies’ sacrilege. Is this part of her plan to save their souls? Who cares? My street cred sure doesn’t.
On the van ride home, we hold a church service of our own, listening to F-word-laden sermons from Ice Cube and Warren G as Luke claps along and Mom bobs her head off beat. When we get back, I stand in our driveway while Mom and Luke and the homies filter out and Stockton’s nighttime summer breeze, the perfect tango of warmth and chill, envelops me. I look up at the roof. It’s almost July and we’re the only house on the block with our Christmas lights still up, three years running. I hope we never take them down.
Daniel is at the altar. On his knees. Weeping.
July hasn’t been great for our gang. Daniel got caught in a shootout at Louis Park and his friend was killed. Even worse, a citywide gang war is underway and Daniel is right in the middle of it. We’re right in the middle of it.
Daniel told us the news yesterday, trembling, struggling to smoke his rolled cigarette. There is a price on Daniel’s head: a man named Face is out there somewhere, hunting for him.
Mom didn’t flinch. “He’s got a contract out on you?” she said. “Well, I’ve got news for this Face character: God’s got a contract out on him, and he better watch his step.”
At the altar, Mom’s hands join the army of hands praying for Daniel. Her voice thunders over the hushed amens and hallelujahs: “Lord, we ask for your protection right now. We ask for your peace to rain down. Please send your guardian angels and have them protect Daniel, Father. It’s just like you say in Isaiah: ‘No weapon formed against me shall prosper . . .’”
When I open my eyes and look back, Sisqó’s behind me, extending his hand toward Daniel. The rest of the gang dipped after the service to go wait in the van, but Sisqó stayed to ask for God’s protection over his friend. I wonder if Mom’s plan to save these kids is actually possible, if the Holy Spirit is slowly working its way through them like an antibiotic.
It’s dead silent on the drive home, except for the click-clack of Luke’s Game Boy Advance. Daniel sits in the back-back seat, fist against his mouth, staring out the window. I’ve hardly said a word to Daniel since Face put a hit out on him. Consolation has never been my strength, particularly in matters involving contract killings.
As Mom turns off the ignition and Luke clicks his seatbelt and hops out of the van, still entrenched in the world of Pokémon, it’s not just Daniel I’m worried about.
If—or when—Face comes, won’t he come for all of us?
Mom is a sanctified contract killer. Less than a week after her declaration at the altar, Face is found dead at Louis Park, laid out like a prayer blanket.
It’s a huge win for Operation Jesus Is My Homeboy: on Wednesday, Daniel calls up his unsaved Norteño homies and invites them to youth group. He and Mom pick them up and mob to church while Luke and I stay behind so two more Nortes can give their lives to Christ.
That weekend we barbecue in the driveway to celebrate Face’s death. Sisqó mans the grill. Lately he just stays home with Mom and mows the lawn and helps her clean around the house.
“Look at you, Sisqó. Out here lookin’ like a dad and shit,” says Les, lounging in a rogue kitchen chair, slicking his hair back. Daniel sits next to him and scribbles rhymes in his legal pad while 2Pac plays in the background.
Sisqó shrugs. “Shoot. Someone’s gotta do the grillin’ ’round here.” He drops a link and chicken breast onto a paper plate and claps the tongs in Luke’s direction. “Aye lil’ man, you get first dibs.”
Luke grabs the plate and licks his lips.
I motion my head toward Sisqó. “Whaddya say, Luke?”
“Thaaank youuu,” Luke says, rolling his eyes.
Sisqó grins and says “You—are—wel—come,” mouthing the syllables with his tongs.
Stephanie, rocking a pair of DC skate shoes bigger than she is, keeps asking if I have a girlfriend. It’s embarrassing. She probably assumes I’m pulling hella chicks because I wear an XL T-shirt now. I tell Sisqó to save me a link and drumstick and walk through the open garage door to check on Mom and Jeff.
Inside, I hear marital buckshot ricocheting down the hallway. I pass the living room where DC, unbothered, is playing video games and reach Mom and Jeff’s open bedroom door.
“Jeff! Give me the keys!” Mom shoves the pickup truck on Jeff’s Snap-On Tools shirt then lunges at the keys trapped inside his fist.
“Oh, you don’t like that I want those kids gone, so you’re gonna throw a fit ’n run off like you always do?”
Fights like these are why I used to sleep with the cordless phone at night. That was before the homies lived here, and why they aren’t going anywhere.
“GIVE—ME—THE—KEYS,” Mom cries, one word for each tug, but Jeff’s grip is Fort Knox. She lets go and collapses at the foot of the bed with her face in her hands. I flash back to their last skirmish when I called Stockton PD and an arriving officer pepper sprayed and body slammed Jeff on our front porch.
Mom looks at me for support. “Hun, Jeff doesn’t want them here anymore. They got nowhere to go and he wants to kick ’em out on the street. And he won’t give me the keys.”
“I don’t want them gone either. Look. Why don’t you stay here and you and Jeff can talk about this tomorrow? Can’t we all just chill for tonight?”
“No. I need to go. Jeff, you better give me those FUCKIN’ keys you FUCKIN’ asshole! You want me to walk out there and tell those boys what’s going on?”
Jeff dangles the keys in front of Mom’s face. “Fine. Take the fuckin’ keys. I don’t fuckin’ care.” He stomps down the hallway in his blue Wranglers and cowboy boots. Mom storms past him and slaps her flip-flops through the kitchen and the garage then jumps in the van as Jeff and I watch from the open doorway.
The grill is turned off now. Luke, cheeks slathered in Sweet Baby Ray’s, wants seconds, but Sisqó drops his plate once Mom starts the engine and races to the passenger side. He probably forgot something in the van. A CD? A pack of cigs?
The passenger-side door slams. It doesn’t open again. Mom and Sisqó rumble down the block while the rest of us inhale the smoke from the Face-Is-Dead BBQ.
The sliding glass door in the computer room screams open. It’s Daniel. “Yooo what up homes?”
I pause Grand Theft Auto. “Yooo what’s good?”
What’s good is Daniel had sex with a girl, technically in Luke’s bedroom, but Luke never sleeps in there anyways. Daniel tells me about her P-word. I nod like a seasoned pro. I guess this is when you congratulate the homie on a job well done.
“Dang, for real?” I give Daniel a pound. “Nicely done, man. Nicely done.”
“Yee. Ya already know,” he says. “But yeah, I uh . . . I gotta talk to ya ’bout sum.”
“Alright. Shoot.”
“Ya know that trip we made to your cuzzo’s house in Santa Rosa? I think there’s sum you should know about.”
Mom, Luke, Daniel, and Sisqó drove to my cousin’s last week and I couldn’t tag along because it’s August and my school starts back up before Mom’s does. Tenth grade sucks. So does staying home with Jeff.
I tell Daniel to spill.
“’Ight look,” Daniel continues. “We were all finna crash for the night, right? Your mom took the couch in the living room and me and Sisqó were ’sposed to sleep in the guest bedroom. But when I got up in the middle of the night, I think cuz I was thirsty or some shit, I seen your mom and Sisqó on the couch.”
“What were they doing?”
“Well—” Daniel scratches his neck “—they were looking into each other’s eyes, and your mom was, like, caressing his face and shit.”
Mom told me Sisqó left with her after the Face-Is-Dead BBQ because he needed some air. Seems legit. And this? Just a nice Christian lady looking after a troubled kid, that’s all.
Before I can respond, Daniel lets out a huge gust. “Look man. I know this some weird shit. Just figured you should know. Nah mean?”
“She was probably just comforting him or something,” I say with a shrug.
Daniel shakes his head and steps outside to smoke a jay. I stare at the TV until it blurs. The old Panasonic that wears my PlayStation 2 like a sombrero, resting on a wobbly school desk that will buckle any day now.
Not long after Daniel’s revelation, Sisqó leaves the Norteños and gives his life to Christ. Daniel wants to jump him out of the gang, but Mom isn’t having it. Daniel backs off. Sisqó puts down the steak knives.
Now that he’s saved, Sisqó is morphing into a 17-year-old Latino version of Jeff. He drives the van when Jeff is gone, wears small, tucked-in shirts and tight Wrangler jeans, talks in Jeff’s fake country drawl, and otherwise imitates Jeff’s Marlboro Man sensibilities. He doesn’t even bump 2Pac or Bone Thugs anymore. Only Kirk Franklin.
Mom hasn’t slept with Jeff for days, opting to sleep on one end of the sectional with Sisqó on the floor next to her. I haven’t noticed any face caressing, just nonstop whispering, as I lay on the other side of the living room trying to decipher their words over late-night infomercials.
I stay home from school one day to embark on a reconnaissance mission. Mom, who’s still on summer break, is in the kitchen with Sisqó. I can hear it from the living room, that whispering again, the thorny sibilance of it.
They probably think I’m asleep and don’t want to wake me. Only one way to find out.
I tiptoe across the tile and periscope my neck around the corner, enough to see outside the kitchen window: our fractured driveway, the creek across the street, beyond it, microscopic golfers in polos, khakis, and Titleist hats roaming the green sprawl of Swenson Golf Course. Mom stands by the kitchen table. Sisqó walks toward her. Slowly, confidently, closer—
“WHAT THE HELL!”
He kissed Mom. On the lips. She accepted it. Like communion.
Sisqó jumps back and scratches his neck. Mom throws up the don’t shoot hands.
“What was that? What—what just happened?” This knot in my stomach. I’ve felt it before, watching Jeff pin Mom against the wall, his hand swallowing her neck.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Mom says. “It’s a cultural thing.”
“What? What does that even mean?”
Sisqó grins, his eyes small as paper cuts. Small as his annoying, black, form-fitting shirt.
“What are you smilin’ at, you piece of shit?”
My first-ever shit. I’m flying, riding shotgun on the NeverEnding Story dog. I’m invincible. I could stomp Sisqó out right now like a flaming paper bag of shit.
Sisqó huffs, overheats. “What the fuck you say to me you little bitch?”
“Sisqó, don’t listen to him. He’s just upset.” Mom tries to hold him back, but he’s got Sauron in his eyes. I turn to run. Too late.
Sisqó shoves me onto the couch. I fold into the fetal position. He will purple my eyes, shatter my face into an archipelago. But none of his blows land. He mutters a string of F-words and then marches outside in his house shoes and slams the front door. Mom chases after him.
Sunday night. Mom’s eased up on the homies’ mandatory church attendance, and Sisqó is visiting his cousins on the other side of town, so tonight’s service is a throwback appearance for The Original Four—me, Mom, Luke, and Jeff. It’s also my best chance of solving the Mom-Sisqó Rubik’s Cube.
Maybe the late-night van ride really was nothing. The couch-side whispers? A mentor and mentee talking about life. The face caresses at my cousin’s house? Chalk it up to maternal instinct. Who knows if Daniel was exaggerating or misread the moment? Even the kiss could’ve in fact been “a cultural thing.” In Sisqó’s family, that is how they show affection. I’m pretty sure the French and Italians do the same thing, but I have to know for sure.
As the service winds down, the worship leader’s sultry guitar twangs mesmerize the congregation and the pastor announces the altar call. Mom and Jeff head down the aisle for prayer; Luke and I hang back on the pew. While Luke plays his Game Boy Advance, I grab the green composition journal Mom left behind and skim past old sermon notes, grocery lists, quotes from famous evangelists, Luke’s colored pencil drawings of the sun and flocks of birds and round smiling faces. A single journal entry hides between dozens of blank pages.
Mom’s cursive is hard to read.
“Can I lay by you?”
Mom’s cursive is black.
He pushes his groin against me
Black like that shiny cardboard box.
Up and down
The only gift Mom bought for my 8th birthday.
Up and down
Seeing the PlayStation 1 inside that box.
Pumping and pumping
Knowing Mom spent her entire unemployment check on it.
Mom.
She used to bribe me with Oreo milkshakes so I’d come with her to church on Wednesday nights.
Tender mercy, hideous strength
I would have gone for a small order of curly fries. For nothing at all.
“Do you like my kisses?”
Mom, remember when we walked three miles to watch a double feature of Pleasantville and The Rugrats Movie?
“We can’t do this”
You kept saying “Hallelujah” during the Prince of Egypt trailer. I wasn’t embarrassed.
“I thought we were having a good time?”
Mom, the night Jeff’s hand swallowed your neck and you scolded me for calling the cops, you were right.
“Let me up”
Jeff might be our only hope.
“I want to get up”
Mom’s cursive is hard to read.
Small talk and laughter rise over the fading worship music. I throw my arm around Luke and spot Mom and Jeff at the altar, wishing they had never left the pew. Usually Mom taps brother-what’s-his-face or sister-what’s-her-name on the shoulder and chats for thirty minutes until we’re the last ones left in the sanctuary, but this time Mom turns around and looks straight into my wet—not crying, just wet—eyes. She bows her head without blinking. Faces the altar again. Says one more prayer.
The night Jeff choke-slammed Sisqó on the front lawn I was at the movies, unaware that I’d missed the pay-per-view event of the year.
Jeff, Mom, and Luke had returned from Barnes & Noble to find the front door wide open, the house pitch-black inside except for the staticky TV in the living room. Sisqó—who fumes when Mom and Jeff spend time together—exploded out the side of the house with a Louisville Slugger and Jeff took him to school like Ms. Frizzle. I’d call it self-defense, but Jeff wasn’t Sisqó’s target. Mom was.
Jeff’s choke slam bore little consequence: a couple days later, Sisqó is still here, sticking to Mom like Pam spray as she cooks breakfast that smells better than I want it to. Jeff and I sit at the kitchen table eating Luke’s leftover Halloween candy. Jeff gets up to grab another cup of coffee, passing the refrigerator where, scribbled on a PG&E envelope, one of Mom’s favorite quotes hangs on for dear life: “HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED!” Jeff leans back on the counter, sips his black Folgers, and turns his holey Camel Cigarette T-shirt toward Sisqó.
“Hey. Why don’t you give her some space, dude.”
Sisqó turns around and squints his eyes. “What the fuck you say to me?”
Jeff stands up straight. “I said you should give her some room. She can’t breathe with you all up in her space all the time.”
I look back at the computer room where Luke is playing video games. The sliding glass door is shut. Mom, wearing cutoff Baby Phat jeans and a tank top, stands between Jeff and Sisqó and contemplates which suitor to root for: the dude who proposed to her at a gas station, or the dude who ran at her with a baseball bat.
Sisqó’s locomotive starts up. “Why don’t you step up and move me out the way then, bitch?”
“You needa calm down n’ watch how you talk to me, dude,” says Jeff, taking another sip.
Jeff turns his back and Sisqó charges behind him, knocking his coffee to the floor.
Tasmanian devil Jeff, the Jeff I once feared, bulldozes Sisqó to the ground. He pins him down and wrestles him into a headlock.
“I told you I wasn’t playin’, dude.”
Mom begs Jeff to release his sleeper hold. Sisqó can hardly speak. “Bitch . . . fuckin’ bitch . . . I’ll kill you . . . bitch-ass motherfucker . . .”
By now, Daniel and the homies have gathered at the edge of the kitchen.
“DAYUMMM! Jeff gave Sisqó the business!”
“Sisqó, you fuckin’ dumbass!”
“DAYUMMM!”
Mobbin’ with the homies in Mom’s van and watching Scarface together isn’t what it used to be, but their enthusiasm sweetens Jeff’s victory. My victory.
Sisqó gives up and scutters down the hallway like a B-word and slams the door to one of the bedrooms. Triumphant, I slide open the door to the computer room where Luke, oblivious to the Jeff-Sisqó tussle, sits criss-cross applesauce playing Grand Theft Auto. I rake an affectionate noogie through his velvety blonde hair and remind him to only hurt the bad guys.
Mom shakes me awake one November morning. I’m not late for school.
“Honey. You and Luke gotta get out of here.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Just get up and get dressed!”
Mom hasn’t shown me this much attention in weeks. She leaves my room and the hypotheticals swirl: is the citywide gang war closing in on us? Is there another contract out on Daniel’s head? I stumble into the living room, the computer room, the kitchen, still brainstorming scenarios, and notice the homies, and Sisqó, who I guess are all high school dropouts at this point, have vanished.
“Mom. Why is no one here?”
“CPS. Okay? CPS. Sisqó’s aunt said something. She made a report about stuff.”
Child Protective Services scares me more than any contract killer. I picture a convoy of leathery-skinned women wearing those glasses with the chain in the back. They don’t care about Norteños or Sureños or how big I look in my XL Hanes hoodie. They’ll snatch me and Luke, try to placate us with Baskin Robbins 31-cent scoops, call us to the stand and twist our words like knives, put Mom in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit like that teacher from Seattle I saw on E! True Hollywood Story.
Are you OK in there? I’ll ask Mom, through a blue telephone behind double-pane glass. Are you eating good? When are you getting out?
Listen to me, she’ll say, pointing her finger. When’s the last time you read your Bible?
A week goes by. The homies are back. Sisqó is back. Things are back to abnormal: Les practicing wrestling moves on my Jack Skellington frame and enlightening me on the fundamentals of “finger banging.” DC hogging the PlayStation 2. Daniel devouring my Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pies and throwing parties when Mom and Jeff aren’t around—parties at which 4-year-olds mistake Keystone Light for Pepsi, and their big brother intervenes just in time. Daniel also Jedi-mind-tricked Mom into adding two new cast members: Dorian, Daniel’s dad, an ex-con; and Mike, Daniel’s uncle, a meth addict.
CPS never shows up, but I still keep Luke within noogie range, still wait for social workers to rappel from the ceiling as Mom, a never-smoker, lights one cig after another and talks to lawyers on the phone.
At least the more crowded the house gets the harder it is for Sisqó to spend time alone with Mom. When she and Jeff go someplace without him, Sisqó rips out the seats in the van when they return, tells her he’s worthless, threatens to hang himself with an extension cord. Dorian and Mike laugh. They know he’s full of S-word. Mom is, too. During No-Homies Week, I confronted her about the journal entry, the trip to my cousin’s house, Sisqó attacking her with a baseball bat, all of it. But she’s gone full Jonestown. Sisqó is the only one who ever does anything for me, she said, the only one who treats me with respect.
On a cloudy morning in late November, before we drive to my aunt’s house for a post-Thanksgiving hangout, I pop into our garage, overcast with weed smoke, and a chorus of “HEYYY WHITEBOYYY!” drowns out some Norte song I’ve heard a thousand times. The homies laugh till they cough. Mike laughs too, missing teeth and all. I can’t even grab a hoodie from the dryer without interrupting a That ’70s Show puff-puff-pass circle.
“Dammmn white boy,” says Dorian, shaking his greasy black hair, tattoos smirking through his wifebeater. “You’re skinny skinny. Gotta put some meat on them bones.”
Embarrassment bloodies my face. I ran out of clean XL T-shirts and this small is so tight I could play my ribs like a xylophone. Even through the weed smoke and the haze of their euphoria, my actual size, my true powerlessness, looms extra large: Barely taller than Mom. More skeleton than skin. Fragile as butterfly wings.
“True that. He ain’t built for the trenches,” Daniel says, twisting one of his braids. “He got smarts tho, on some kingpin-type shit.”
The homies nod. Stephanie and Les straighten their North Cali fitted hats. Daniel always sounds profound with his black Locs sunglasses on—if you aren’t hip to his way of thinking. Daniel knows we’re heading out of town, and buttering me up, in his mind, keeps me from blowing the whistle on the house party or kickback he’s almost certainly lined up.
Whatever. I slide on my XL-sweatshirt-slash-body-armor and drum the washing machine on my way out: a swan song of sorts. Today’s drive to my aunt’s house could be the first step in evicting these fools. The trip is an Original Four exclusive. Me, Mom, Luke, and Jeff. It’s only for the day, but maybe Mom and Jeff will rediscover some magic and break free of Daniel and Sisqó’s spell and jump them both—jump them all—out of the house. Maybe Mom will abracadabra back into the old Mom. Koala-Kare-diaper-change Mom, tuna-fish-no-crust Mom, asking-if-I’m-OK Mom. I miss that Mom. But when I miss her I feel small, and Luke needs the opposite of small right now. He needs the biggest of big brothers, the grownest of the grown, the brotherly colossus who’s two years away from legally watching Eyes Wide Shut by himself, who’s bewildered by this strange woman, this woman destroying packs like a Yugoslavian, this woman who thinks we’re better off living with a gang of Nortes and one ex-Norte who nearly caved her skull in. Is she only happy when she has people to fix? Are we, her family, not broken enough for her?
We strap ourselves into the van and back out of the driveway. Our house grows smaller in the rear window where I hope to spy an ant-sized Sisqó crossing his arms and moping, or chasing after us like a T-Rex, but it’s only asphalt and gray sky. Even before we left he seemed unbothered, staring out the living room window as DC played video games. No slammed doors. No calling Jeff a “fuckin’ bitch” and threatening to stab him. Oh well, he still lost.
We take the Interstate 5 on-ramp. Luke bounces his Bob the Builder shoes against his booster seat as the local Christian radio jingle blares from our blown-out speakers: Your Christian companion, K-Y-C-C! Mom and Jeff crank an acoustic worship song to an unholy decibel level. I embrace it like the miracle of cured blindness. These divine strums are the Gorilla Glue that will stick these broken lovers back together.
Less than a quarter mile down the freeway, just as the reality of our Original Four adventure sets in, the van wobbles like a horseshoe.
“What in the hell!” Jeff says.
“Jeff! What’s happening!” Mom says.
“Wee!” Luke says.
Jeff veers to the shoulder and avoids swerving off the steep embankment. Mom and I come up for air, hands over our hearts like we’re checking for a pulse.
Cars and trucks and eighteen-wheelers roar past our hobbled vessel while Mom and Jeff assess the damage. It’s dope to see them standing outside the van together, hands on their hips, shaking their heads in exasperated agreement; less dope is that we’re heading back home after this is resolved. No exclusive getaway for the Original Four. Sisqó wins. They all win.
“Jeff, we need to talk.”
My onetime monster turned lethal weapon slouches at the kitchen table with his hands clasped behind his head, staring out the window at the Sureño-blue December sky. Mom, Daniel, Sisqó, and a couple of the homies drove off somewhere. A one-on-one is overdue.
“What,” Jeff says.
“This whole setup isn’t working. I mean, it hasn’t been working for a while, but now it’s really not working. You—we—gotta do something.”
“These kids bein’ here is your mom’s deal. She’ll handle it. And they ain’t causin’ no trouble.”
I close my eyes and breathe deep. I only have a few minutes before Jeff leaves for his weekly anger management class.
“Jeff. Listen.” I lower my voice so Dorian and Mike and DC can’t hear over the living room TV. “No one’s gonna handle Daniel and all them if you don’t. And Sisqó? We could have died on that freeway the other day. The other kids saw him messing with the tires before we left.”
Back on the I-5 shoulder, hot pink Razr phone and AAA insurance card in hand, Jeff told us that the wheels almost came off the van—something that could only happen if someone loosened the lugnuts. Sisqó. He’s crossed the Fatal Attraction threshold. The bunny is boiling.
“It’s all under control,” Jeff says. “Sisqó’s just a kid with an attitude problem. And we don’t want him runnin’ to the police and feedin’ them lies ’bout him and Mom.”
“Who cares? You really think it can get any worse? He spends every second with her. Imagine if Luke was old enough to know what’s going on.”
Jeff cocks his head. “There ain’t nothin’ goin’ on, dude.”
“Jeff, when’s the last time she slept in the bedroom? You don’t think that’s weird?”
“We’re done here.”
Jeff and his cowboy boots clomp out of the kitchen. I plant my chin on the table and wave my hand over the rising breath of his Folgers. Mom and Jeff are brainwashed. Can’t tell the cops, can’t risk Mom’s freedom any more than her dignity. The only silver bullet solution to the Sisqó problem is an actual bullet, or Daniel, who scares Sisqó more than Mom’s wedding band—especially after Sisqó quit the Norteños. I heard about that scrap Daniel stomped out by the fairgrounds. He can dog-walk Sisqó out of our house anytime he wants. But Daniel’s loyalty isn’t to us; it’s to the streets Mom thought she was saving him from, the streets that moved in with him six months ago.
After Jeff leaves for his class and Dorian and Mike go outside to smoke, I jump on the computer. Luke’s next to me, belly-down on the carpet, playing Ratchet & Clank: basically, Grand Theft Auto without the blood, F-words, prostitutes, and gang members. I’d normally log in to Club Penguin, but I check the Internet Explorer browser history on a whim. Websites with more than one X pop up. Several Google searches for the P-word that isn’t “Pentecostal” or “Protestant”: pussy, wet pussy, tight pussy, clit (another word for vagina). Each search includes the word teen; I can tell it was Dorian by the timestamps. Can’t the girls he watches, the ones with tight, wet P-words, at least be in their twenties?
I clear the history and log out, leaving Luke to his button mashing and joystick twirling, his pulverizing of bad guys on some planet far away from here. In the kitchen, I aimlessly step from square to square on the linoleum, not minding the cracks, thinking about what would happen if Luke stumbled upon Dorian’s porn or one of Mike’s pipes or another open beer can or Sisqó kissing Mom and I wasn’t there to say don’t watch that / don’t touch that / don’t drink that / don’t worry, it’s just a cultural thing.
Linoleum turns to gunky carpet. DC’s kicked back in the living room watching Blood In Blood Out, one of the Daniel-approved hood flicks we rented from Blockbuster. He’s too zonked to notice my sup head nod.
“Sup, DC.”
“Shit. Chillin’,” DC mumbles, without shifting his eyes from the screen.
“My mom say when they’d be back? I was asleep when they left.”
“Nah.”
“You know where they went?”
“Eastside.”
“Why all the way out there?”
“Daniel had to re-up.”
“What you mean?”
“Your mom took Daniel out east to cop some weed.”
My lips move. Something like: Oh. OK.
The shapes on the TV say words. Something like: Your mother has been modified from her original version. She has been formatted to accommodate Daniel’s every need. This includes facilitating drug deals. Mom is bending so far backwards for Daniel she’s crab walking. Soon she’ll be Daniel’s getaway driver, money launderer, henchwoman, anything for her prized pupil, the star of her gangland adaptation of Lord of the Flies.
I plop onto a wayward kitchen chair in the garage. The ghosts of deceased blunts and rolled cigs conjure up the Norteño 101 lessons Daniel taught me. We don’t kick it like that anymore. Mobbin’ to Barnes & Noble is an errand now, like Daniel dragging Mom out east to cop weed. He dragged Mom to Louis Park the day after the shootout so he and his flamed-up homies could mourn their dead flamed-up homie. Had Face or a pack of Sureños been there, would Daniel have cared if Mom caught a stray bullet? Before sexing a girl in Luke’s bedroom, does Daniel ever step on a Hot Wheels car and think twice? Daniel’s lucky I stopped Luke from sipping that abandoned Keystone Light. Lucky I didn’t rat on those parties altogether, though surely Daniel would have talked his way out of it.
Daniel.
Our computer wasn’t a teen-porn theater before he got here. Before Daniel, Mom and I watched TBS weekend marathons together, she didn’t smoke, and there wasn’t a Bizarro World adolescent Jeff clone hounding her 24/7. If Daniel never showed up, I’d still have a mom. Sisqó didn’t come here on his own; Daniel brought him here and used Sisqó’s psychotic bullshit as cover fire while he snuck in reinforcements and pushed me out of the frame. I bet none of them were ever really homeless. I bet they have places to go, but those places have rules. I bet Daniel’s mom deserted him for a reason.
Daniel. I am the nothing and he is the everything Mom will do anything for. He is the troubled street kid, the fix-it project, the son she’s always wanted: the son with tattoos and a kerosene tongue and old bullet fragments lodged in his chest, not the son who still honors his D.A.R.E. contract from fifth grade.
In Daniel, Mom sees a mosaic: brokenness at its most beautiful. In Mom, Daniel sees a meal ticket he could give two shits about.
I was never homies with Daniel, never homies with any of them, just a pawn, a part of the takeover. An ashtray.
Mom walks in the front door around 7 PM, followed by Sisqó and Daniel and the rest of the drug deal brigade, laughing at some joke that isn’t funny. From the kitchen window, I can see Dorian and Mike still smoking in front of the house. Good.
I feel yoked, six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier in my black XL T-shirt and baggy Walmart sweats, sizing up Daniel as he walks toward the garage to smoke and blast his Norte music. He says “sup.” I don’t respond. I don’t give a fuck.
“Hey Daniel.”
Daniel spins around. “What’s good?”
“This isn’t your fuckin’ house.”
My first official fuckin’ is ninety-five percent F, five percent uckin’. All front teeth and bottom lip. It’s majestic. It hangs in the air like Jordan with his tongue out. My repressed fuckin’ has been training for this moment, meditating inside a Tibetan cave, studying fucks from Too $hort and 2Pac and Tarantino, from Nortes who take fuck for granted. This fuck means something. It might mean a shattered jaw, but Mom is right here. She won’t let anything happen to me.
“The fuck?” Daniel says, stink-faced. He inches closer. Sisqó and the others join Mom and Luke in the kitchen, ready for a show. My legs are Jell-O.
“I said this isn’t your fuckin’ house. You can fool my mom and Jeff and everyone else but not me. I know what you’re up to motherfu—”
Daniel grabs my shirt collar and slams me against the door in the kitchen. Biggie Smalls. Ready to Die. Ready for Mom to step in and push Daniel away with her protective motherly strength. She’ll kick him out of the house tonight. A package deal of Daniel and Sisqó and the rest of the gang is wishful thinking. But Daniel would be a start.
“You can’t do this to me! This is my house! Mom, get him off me!”
This is my favorite part. When Mom flies out of the phone booth and eviscerates Daniel—like those thrift store workers who caught me playing hide-and-go-seek in the clothing racks, like the old ladies at Hallmark who freaked whenever I handled the Precious Moments figurines, like Ms. Mims after she drew a happy face on my failed math test—but Mom’s eyes are a color I don’t recognize.
I yell for her one, two, three more times and she tells me that I shouldn’t have said what I said and what did I think was going to happen? She tells Daniel that it’s OK and asks that he let me down and we can all talk this through. She asks. Her son, her creation, her real-life Tamagotchi is in danger and she requests that Daniel put me down. My well-being is a favor.
The wind chill of Daniel’s expletives no longer registers. Only the sting of Mom’s indifference. The smug look on Sisqó’s face. The sight of Luke, who sees how small his big brother really is.
Daniel releases my stretched-out shirt collar and lets me down, unaware that Mom already did the honors. I shuffle out the front door, across the fractured driveway, past Dorian and Mike smoking a blunt, and into the black of night hanging over me like our unseasonable Christmas lights, like brotherly disappointment, like the solitude of a motherless son jumped out of a gang he was never a part of.
I circle the block, waiting for Mom’s flip-flops to slap the concrete behind me. Crickets. I stop under an orange halo of street light and bury my face in a shirt so big it could swallow me whole. So big I could disappear.
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