My heart sank when I stepped out of the taxicab to face an ugly house with blue-gray paint peeling off its walls. It was a small, boxy one-story, flat-roofed house from where all the iron railings and its gate had been removed, just as it had been done at my school after I had refused to go in my first day of class.
Mother struggled with the three door locks, and when we walked into the living room, I gagged from the strong smell of chicken shit. A three-level metal cage crowded with loud clucking chickens fighting to claim what little space they could steal from the others, stood against the right wall—Mother’s new business was already living in our house. Father was nowhere to be found, and I began looking for him.
Along a narrow hallway, there were two bedrooms and a bathroom to my right, the last bedroom emptying into a yoke-yellow dining room, and then I turned right into a maize kitchen, but Father was nowhere in sight. Crossing the open door at the back of the kitchen, I stepped into a narrow patio with a laundry sink built into a tall cement wall. To the side of the sink, a warped wooden door was held close by a brass latch. After opening it, I stepped into an enormous, cemented backyard cluttered with old furniture, a discarded sale sign, and an abandoned oil drum. On three of its sides, the patio was surrounded by a cracked and crumbling high wall. To the left of the house, a wood and chicken wire fence stood in front of a small patio belonging to the home next to us which shared a common wall with our house.
Still, Father wasn’t there. So I returned to the front of the house, looking for him, this time through an inner courtyard where the equipment needed to kill and prepare the suffocating chickens stood against each wall. At the end of this inner courtyard, I stepped into a dark vestibule that measured no more than four-by-six feet. On its left sat my much-adored headboard. On my right, my old folding cot had returned. I froze in a panic as I tried to convince myself that there was a room I had missed. But I knew this was no more than a child’s hide-and-seek game where he pretends that no one can see him while hiding in plain sight. In this new house, there was a bedroom for Tía Cecilia, and a bedroom for Mother and Father, but not a bedroom for me.
Bewildered, I marched into the living room where Mother and Tía were locked in conversation, threw myself on the floor and cried. I remained there until Tía helped me to my feet, almost as an afterthought, not saying anything.
Where is Father? I asked, but I didn’t get a reply as the women continued to talk. Then my sadness turned to rage as I repeatedly asked where Father was and demanded to be taken to my bedroom at once.
With fear in her eyes, Tía took a few steps back while Mother stared me down with the same commanding look that she had used to frighten me in the past. But this time, I didn’t move or look away. Instead, I stared back, intoxicated with the power of challenging her for the very first time in my life.
Reacting to my defiance, Mother softened her approach, and in a surprisingly maternal manner, explained that sacrifices needed to be made for the family to get ahead. Baffled by my misfortune, I struggled to understand why the sacrifice was only asked of me and not them.
“¡Te odio!” I hate you! I screamed in a wild yell, before running down the narrow hallway again, all the way to the dirty backyard. In frustration, I looked around for a place to hide and crawled under the old table, pushing my back against the cracks on the wall.
Father eventually showed up, but only to stand in front of me with a belt in his hand. Frightened by this new act of his, I silently followed him into the house I already despised. Once in front of the women, I refused to apologize, despite the warning of his belt. Crossing my arms over my chest, I held my ground until Tía burst into laughter, and Mother laughed when Tía pointed out that I had been acting as stubbornly as she. And with that, there was an end to the fight, with my understanding that it was possible to stand my ground and win, and that if I stood my ground, I could do as I liked.