1963, four years old
Two days after Ms. Cook and the State of Texas dropped me off with Dodge, he took me to a Lawless barbecue. We drove there in his white pickup truck that lacked seat belts and had rusted polka dots on the exterior. The leather booth had faded long ago and was torn around the seams. With each bump in the road, I sank farther into the seat where the metal coils poked me in fun. Dodge drank a beer as he drove. He smelled sour and hadn’t been nice to me so far. I sat as far away from him as I could.
When we parked, Dodge opened his door and hopped out, but I didn’t move. I didn’t want to get out, didn’t want to be around people I didn’t know. At four, I was old enough to know that I no longer lived in Texas, my parents were dead, and I lived with a strange man who wasn’t fond of how I looked or even glad that I existed. I couldn’t imagine the people we were meeting would make that better.
Dodge turned back and looked at me. “Get out. I ain’t going to wait on you all day.”
With a pit in my stomach, I opened the door and jumped down. I followed Dodge past the gray trailer home to the backyard, dragging my feet in the knee-high yellow grass that scratched me from the top of my thighs to my ankles, leaving behind long scrapes. Big motorcycles and old trucks like the one Dodge drove filled the front yard. They leaned toward me menacingly, baring their grills and bucking at me once or twice so that I picked up my feet and walked faster.
We rounded the corner to the sight of a crowd of burly men with round paunches, emaciated men with long beards, curvy women with back rolls protruding from bras, thin women with visible rib cages, and kids dirty from play. The adults sat in a colorful selection of lawn chairs by the back porch. They had drinks in their hands—a few had two. Some of the women sat on the laps of the men and laughed too loudly.
“Dodge!” a woman with red, curly hair yelled. She jumped off a skinny guy with big black square sunglasses and ran to my uncle. She kissed Dodge on the mouth and grabbed his hand and pulled him to the others. Someone threw him a beer. He caught it and took a drink before flopping down in an empty lawn chair. The redhead sat on his lap and twirled his long beard hair in her finger. His hand wrapped around her waist, but he didn’t smile.
I stopped. I didn’t know where to go. It didn’t feel right to follow Dodge, so I stood near the fence, watching. The kids played on the other end of the yard. The boys wrestled one second, then screamed and chased each other the next, their hands placed together to form pretend guns. A few girls tried to join in but were pushed away. There were a handful of other girls playing with dolls in the dirt.
“Hey! Kid!”
I turned to the adults and discovered their eyes fixed on me. It was Dodge who had yelled. The red-headed woman’s lips pursed in annoyance that I had Dodge’s attention.
“What the hell you standing there for? Go play.”
I didn’t move. Dodge took a drink. “Don’t make me say it again.”
The way he said it—sharper than the way Mama or Dad had ever spoken to me, sent chills across the skin of my arms. I moved toward the kids, even though I didn’t want to.
I walked over to where the girls were playing in the dirt. When I got close enough that I thought Dodge wouldn’t yell at me again, I stopped and watched them. Their dolls had missing limbs and shorn-off hair or were cheap rag dolls with buttons for eyes. When the dolls waved their chewed and frayed hands at me, I wondered where my old toys were now.
The girls never took notice of me, but before long, a group of six boys walked up. I stepped back as they approached. These boys didn’t look like the ones from my old school. They had dirt on their faces and holes in their shirts. Many had cut-off jean shorts and two didn’t even wear shirts.
The tallest, a boy with a white-blond buzz cut, skinny arms, and one large front tooth said, “Who are you?”
I looked at the others before replying, “Raqi.”
The boys laughed. “That’s not a name,” One-Tooth Boy said.
I put my hands in my pockets and looked at the ground. “Is too.”
One-Tooth Boy crossed his arms and looked me up and down. He twisted his lips to the side, as if thinking hard. Finally, he asked, “You a beaner?”
His friends laughed again. One boy whispered in his neighbor’s ear.
I shrugged, not knowing if I was or wasn’t.
One-Tooth Boy moved closer to me and poked my shoulder. “Hey, I’m talking to you. You a beaner?”
I stepped back. “I don’t know.”
A boy with red hair that hung over his eyes in curly tangles spoke up. “You know, a Mexican!”
I shrugged. Ms. Cook had told Dodge my dad was Mexican, but I didn’t know if that meant I was.
“That ain’t an answer,” One-Tooth Boy said. “Why you so dark?” He smelled like sweat and mud and I fought not to scrunch my nose.
“My dad had dark skin.”
“Who’s your daddy? I ain’t ever seen you before,” the boy said.
My stomach clenched. “Dodge is my uncle.”
The boy looked over at the adults. “No, he ain’t. He’s white.”
“Is too,” I said and crossed my arms.
One-Tooth Boy turned and looked at his friends. “She a lying beaner. You too dark to be kin to him.”
I didn’t like how he used that word, and I didn’t think my parents would like it either. I couldn’t say why I said, “stop,” but I did.
The boy faced me; his friends laughed. “Stop what? Stop calling you a beaner? My daddy said Mexicans are stupid, poor beaners that should go back to where they came from.” He shoved my shoulder lightly. “Go back to Mexico.”
I hadn’t ever been in a fight, so I was as surprised as he was when I pushed him and he stumbled backward, mouth open in shock. He regained his balance and ran at me, pushing me to the ground. The air was knocked out of my chest as he landed on top of me. I fought to breathe. My lungs and chest ached with each inhale.
One-Tooth Boy’s balled fist hit my right cheek. I tried to fight back, but his heavy frame made it difficult, and I only struck his arms. Someone yelled, “Fight!” I struggled to push the boy off. We pushed and shoved until we were rolling in the dirt.
Just as he’d finally managed to get on top of me again, a hand pulled the boy away, and I was dragged up by my shirt collar, which burned a ring into the skin around my neck.
“Goddamn it, girl!” Dodge pulled my shirt so tightly that it choked me. My cheek throbbed as I fought to keep my balance and stay on my feet.
“What the hell are you doing?” He let go of my shirt, and I fell to the ground, my knee hitting something hard.
“He started it,” I mumbled. My knee throbbed as I stood up.
Dodge leaned down. “What did you say? Speak up, damn it.”
My eyes burned with hot tears, but I knew it wasn’t the right time. It would make Dodge angrier. I blinked back my tears and gritted my teeth.
“He called me”—I didn’t want to say the word—“something bad.” I muttered the last part.
Dodge turned sideways and tugged his beard. My bottom lip trembled, as I did everything I could to hold back my tears. I balled my hands into tiny fists and pushed my fingernails into my palms. If I looked above Dodge’s head and not at him, I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t.
Dodge turned back to me. “That it?”
I shook my head.
“What else?”
I looked over at the boys. A stocky man spoke to One-Tooth Boy, but he didn’t look mad like Dodge did. I caught the end of the man’s words, “—big mouth, boy.” He ruffled the boy’s hair and pushed him toward his friends. They began a game of tag, like nothing had happened.
I turned to Dodge. “He said you weren’t my uncle.”
Dodge shook his head and without looking at me, said, “If only,” and walked away.
I didn’t move. If I moved, I would cry or run or die. I stared at the yellow grass and rocky dirt and willed myself to not feel anything. I wanted to go home. I wanted my mom and dad, to be sitting between them on the couch in the living room of our redbrick home in Texas.
I thought of that home, how it was the last place where I felt safe. Without moving an inch, I reached for the safety of that house across space and time. I returned with a pile of bricks and laid them in a circle around my feet. I added another row of on top of them, and another and another and another, until I’d built an impenetrable brick tower that came together over my head. The tower would keep in the sea of tears and anger and keep out this new life full of bad words and people. It would protect me now that no one else would.
An hour passed before I saw something move between the cracks of my brick tower. It was a small girl with white-blond hair that hung in strands around her face. She had lots of freckles on her nose and wore a pink dress with an orange stain near the collar. Her feet were bare. She stood on her tiptoes and peeked through a crack between two bricks.
“I’ll play with you,” she said so softly that I couldn’t be sure if I heard her right.
I didn’t respond, so she moved closer. “I said I’ll play with you,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
She shrugged and twirled a piece of hair around her pointer finger. “I don’t care if you’re a Mexican.”
“Why—”
“I’m Bethie.”