I
Ever since we got back from Oregon I have not seen too much of Mom. She has always worked sixty hours at a department store’s shoe section and recently she has taken a second job looking after an invalid Jewish lady in the Hollywood Hills. The woman believes her dead husband comes back to visit her, after dark, which scares Mom, but she needs the money. She goes there most evenings and does not always come back to cook us dinner. Sometimes she will even stay the night. When she does come home she will wander about the house, and will not say a word or even glance at me. Lately I have taken to walking around the neighborhood on days she is home or during the hours when I think she might get back, so I will not be around for her to ignore me.
On Sunday mornings, though, we go to church together. Tomas used to drive us in the Oldsmobile, but nowadays he refuses to go. He says he is still mad at the priest for kicking him out of Saint Dominic’s, though probably he is angry about his car and simply making a point. Sometimes I think about telling him what happened in Oregon—how hard things are on Mom—so he will treat her more considerately, like he used to, but I cannot get myself to do it. When Mom and I go to church without him she sits in the passenger seat while I drive her over in her old Tercel. The trunk has no lock because she did not replace it after somebody broke in, and there is a hole in the floor beneath the accelerator, where wind seeps up around my bare ankles. We go early so she can sit up near the altar, and I do not complain like I used to; when she stays after Mass to pray I no longer point out that she is the only person left, and instead of waiting impatiently outside, I now kneel in the pew next to her.
Sometimes we run into Father Ryan outside, as we emerge from the side doors squinting in the daylight. She will take my arm then and talk to him cheerfully. He is always giving me nice looks because he thinks I am the good one. He never asks about Tomas. Father Ryan is white and pale and from Ohio, but he used to be a missionary in the Philippines, down in Mindanao, then later served as the Chaplain in Forbes Park, so around her he acts like a Filipino, all cheerful and talkative and politely smiling. The first time we ran into him I thought she was in a good mood the way she laughed, but after he went inside, she let go of my arm, and did not say a word on the way home.
II
Today Father Ryan calls me in to talk about my grades.
Gabe, he says. You were always a better student than your brother.
He has discarded the friendly Filipino manner he always adopts with my mother. He watches me behind his wooden desk and the chair beneath me feels hard, its front edge knifing into my legs. His room smells of old wood and dust, like pews, and the chair handles feel worn and oily. His face appears almost like a shadow with the bright window behind him, but you can make out the roughness of his features, made leathery from missionary work done beneath the blazing Philippine sun.
Do you have anything to say for yourself? he says.
This morning I found out I failed a math test, my best subject, which must be why he called me in.
I’m sorry.
I finger my jeans where they fray at my kneecaps, the loose whitewashed strands soft as moss, and try to think of other things. After a while he sighs and pushes a tissue box towards me and then faces away.
I do not take any tissues and turn aside for a moment and keep my eyes wide open. I think very carefully and hard about a pencil sketch he has of a saint on the wall and that seems to work. He senses this, and tosses the box aside.
You used to get good grades, Gabe.
I guess so.
Now you’ve had a C in English, and a D in religion. And now this F. An F, Gabe. He pauses, as if waiting for me to say something, but I do not. Is there anything you would like to tell me, Gabe?
No.
How are things at home?
Okay.
He studies me.
They are going all right with your brother?
Yeah.
And how is your mother?
She’s fine.
And your brother’s fine.
Yeah.
He nods to himself, his stiff white collar collapsing under his chin, which he then has to straighten.
And so you are saying there is no problem with your brother at home.
He leans over the desk and sets his arms on the papers piled on it and looks at me carefully. I feel my blood pulsing but I do not glance away. He looks as if he is trying to give me a message like It’s okay: I can tell him anything and if I just tell him now he won’t be mad. Behind him through the window the silver sky burns so brightly it silhouettes a leafless branch right outside the window. Across the courtyard stands the gray abbey, its stone walls streaked below the gutters with black stains that resemble mascara tears. Above its roof the green top of a sycamore glows, ablaze with sunlight.
No, I don’t have problems with my brother.
He frowns and looks down at some papers and straightens them and examines a sheet. The times he has been over to the house for family parties he has always been cheerful and talkative and would come over whenever he saw me sitting alone in a corner or in front of the TV, to keep me company. Now, his expression looks very serious.
Then the only explanation I can think of, Gabe, is that you’re slipping. You are getting lazy.
I do not tell him I spent three hours last night trying to concentrate on the homework pages. I do not tell him about how my mother and I ate dinner alone last night and did not say a single word. That it is she, not my brother, who is mostly on my mind these days.
I’m sorry, sir.
Don’t be sorry with me, Gabe. It’s your poor mother who’s going to be so disappointed. He shakes his head. You’d think she’d had enough to handle with your brother, but I didn’t ever think she’d have to worry about dealing with you.
Sir?
He looks up again.
Yes. Do you have anything to say for yourself, Gabe?
He looks as if he expects me to offer some excuse that he will either have to belittle or accept, but he seems hopeful.
Please don’t tell my mom.
He frowns and shakes his head but he thinks for a long moment and then tells me he will call my Aunt Jessica in first and I can go. He says this looking down at his papers and does not look up again and I stand and leave the room.
III
It rained this morning, and drops on the bus window catch the sun like a glowing sheet. Then we round a corner and the sparkling fades and I can see the storefronts again. I study them carefully, trying to calm down. Last night Aunt Jessica told my mother she wanted to see me today at her Montana Avenue store. It will be the first time we have talked since Oregon. I get off the bus. As I walk towards her store my hands jitter, the sidewalk still damp from this morning’s rain, littered with dark wet patches that shrink as steam curls off them and glows in the sunlight. There are shoppers here, young people and thin middle-aged women walking with purpose and the crowd of hip-looking people wearing sunglasses at little tables outside the Coffee Bean, studying passersby. I duck my head and hurry past them. Near my aunt’s store, I slow: even through the tinted glass I can see the pretty girls who work for her folding clothing as my aunt talks to them from behind the counter. After the girls carry boxes out back, I hold my breath and push the glass doors open.
She does not see me until I am halfway up, and I worry the browsing customers will think I am here to buy something, but they ignore me.
Gabe, she says coldly. Wait out back and I’ll get to you in a minute.
She looks back down at her ledger and I go to the backroom where the girls pack boxes and they glance at me but say nothing and I wait quietly by the door. Finally they leave. Some minutes later my aunt comes in.
Come on. Let’s go.
The school stands behind a chain-link fence with green canvas that flaps against the wire. The buildings are old houses and warehouses painted pastel colors like light green and baby blue. Aunt Jessica would like me to go here. A weird-looking white sculpture shaped like a roller-coaster rides over the multileveled roofs. It looks like it cost a lot of money. Through a gap in the canvas I can see kids gathered in the parking lot around their cars—many expensive, Jeeps and convertibles, though many of the students dress as if they were from Venice or Compton or Watts.
This is it, Gabe, she says.
We stand on a street so wide it has divider islands of soot-killed grass and parched coral trees. There is an abandoned railroad yard nearby and the freeway overpass has rusted chain-link fences to keep kids from tossing rocks onto cars.
Yeah, I say.
She must sense something weak in my voice because she gives me a hard look. Isn’t it good enough for you, Gabe?
I don’t tell her what I am really worried about. I keep the corner of my vision on a group of kids sitting on the hood of an orange BMW.
She takes my silence the wrong way. It’s a good private school, she says.
I know, I say, but it comes out mumbled and she obviously thinks I do not believe her or care.
Listen. Your mother wants very much for you to go here. It’s not cheap. It isn’t pocket change for me, you know. You’ve got to want to do well to make it worth it. She looks aside. Honestly, by your attitude I wouldn’t pay for it except that I know how much your mother wants this.
I know, I say weakly.
She looks at me sharply, as if I had said something insolent and she is surprised I would dare to voice it. It’s a good thing we got you in before your grades came in this semester, she says. If they ever find out—
She turns and looks up the street and squints and puckers her lips and then she turns back and faces me again.
Look. Gabe. Your mother had hopes when she came to this country. In America you can become successful. You can rise above. You can get education. That’s what she was taught by those nuns the American Catholics sent over. My Aunt Jessica frowns, then seems to check herself and takes a breath. But it’s too late for her, Gabe. She stops again and hardens her lips and looks down the wide street. Her mind seems to be on some distant thought. She is always hanging out with my mother’s younger cousins, who are Filipino nationalists and talk about getting rid of the American bases. They are always talking about white people in Tagalog in front of their faces, even Aunt Jessica, who agrees with them and gives them lingerie. My mother disagrees with them and says they should try to fit in more and should have Tagalog pasted on their foreheads if they love it so much. In the school yard, a bell rings; students jump off the hoods of their cars and clutch their bags, heading inside. Within moments the lot is nearly empty. My aunt’s manicured fingertip touches a dusty fence link as she watches and the silent lot seems to make her sad.
Anyway, Gabe, I don’t think she hopes for anything for herself anymore. She hopes everything for you. My aunt hesitates. She fingers her frosty blue neck scarf that matches her eyes as if to loosen it, but when her hand comes away the delicate fabric remains tightly knotted around her neck.
And let me tell you something more, Gabe. Your mother has been talking to me. Her brother, Betino—your uncle—has been nagging her to send you and your brother to the Philippines. To stay with him and go to school over there. You know what that place is like—the soot, the crime, the crowds, the people, the kidnappings, the humidity? Do you remember? How old were you when you came over here—eight, nine? He wants you to live in his house where he can watch over you. And why do you think he’s offering to do this, Gabe? Do you think it’s because he wants your company? To take you away from your mother? No. He says all this because he believes you are not turning out right, and the reason he thinks that? Well, he talks to your mother, and he can hear in her voice how worried she is. How much it hurts her. Are you listening to me, Gabe? Gabe? Do you understand? He can hear on a phone from five thousand miles away on a bad connection that your mother is in pain and lonely and disappointed and scared. Behind a curtain of expensive static. You and Tomas are everything to her. You think she has dreams of her own? What, to open up a shoemaking business? To become a millionaire? To remarry or something, go dancing, live it up, have a good time? Like some young, happy-go-lucky single mother? Come on. You know what she’s like. She came to this country in the first place, Gabe, even back then, because she had dreams that her kids could have a better life than that caste-driven slum you come from.
Aunt Jessica takes a breath. She lights a cigarette and takes a puff and her heel taps the sidewalk restlessly, as if impatient to stomp a stub out.
Gabe. She’s even thinking of taking up his advice and actually sending you there to that humid country where the kids would know each other already and be chattering away in a strange language. That’s how worried she is. Would you enjoy that? But she doesn’t want to do that if she doesn’t have to, to live in that country that wasn’t kind to her during her childhood, and so I’m trying to get you into Westward.
She glances at the school library, glass and steel modern. Do you have anything to say to me, Gabe?
Her eyes fix on me. I scrape my callused, bitten knuckles against my jeans. I stop myself. Down the street, wind rakes a few withered leaves free from the coral trees and tumbles them across the boulevard and its cars.
It was six years.
What?
I was six years old when I came here.
This stops her. She studies me carefully. The traffic light changes down the street and a truck shudders past; the smell of its gasoline fills my nose and its soot in my mouth tastes like fine sand. For a moment it seems like she might be concerned about me, might even touch me, because she thinks I am odd, but something changes, and her eyes seek me with hardness again.
What kind of a thing to say is that?
I don’t know.
You don’t know.
I shrug.
Well, whatever, Gabrielito. She waves her hand. I don’t want you to fuck up. Do you understand me, Gabe?
I nod.
She turns and I follow her with my hands in my pockets. We do not say anything as she leads me to the administration building to take an entrance test.
IV
Sunday comes again and our mother asks Tomas if he will drive us to church. Though I had already gotten her Tercel key and put on my sweatshirt—ready to drive her myself—I keep quiet and hide the chain gently in my pocket.
He turns and looks at her. He wears an undershirt with no sleeves and you can see the gang tattoo in Spanish on his shoulder. It involves barbed wire coiling through a skull’s empty eye sockets, and pieces of a shattered cross.
Church? he says sarcastically.
We could go to the ten-thirty Mass.
I’m busy.
She shifts about, flustered. She looks away and then back again.
We could go to the twelve o’clock, she says almost shyly.
He gives her a look.
This evening they have the youth Mass, she adds. You might meet some pretty girls.
Tomas grins, then turns to me. I’ll let mama’s boy keep you company, he says.
She glances towards me and I blush and look down but she has already turned back to him. In the end, he doesn’t come and I drive her to church in the Tercel.
She sits in the front, but over by the far door, clutching her purse that lays between us. She absently regards the stores we pass, a deli, a New Age tea place, a florist shop fronted by white buckets of bright flowers, the Asian man who owns it gathering stems for a young guy who wears an earring and black vest. Mom likes such flowers, and we could pass here on the way back, when I could buy her some for the yellow table vase in the kitchen. I plan to do this. Mass is dim and quiet and afterwards she moves to the pews near the Virgin, lighting a candle at her feet and kneeling before her to pray. I drive her home on a route that will take us by the same flower shop. But as we near, she is faced away, the back of her padded shoulder pointed at me, and stopping at the shop suddenly seems like a foolish idea. I drive us past it without stopping.