Here Comes the Rain Again

4:00 p.m.

hot showers

driving

Perla pulling up her stockings

eggs frying in hot lard

tortillas—corn not flour!

Steve McQueen

Lalo came for him.

“Nice and clean,” Big Angel said. “Feeling fresh.” He spoke English to his boy. He felt great. He tucked his little book under himself. He was going to beat this. “I am alive.”

“Right on.”

Lalo had changed out of his uniform. He wasn’t going to admit to anyone that it was too tight. And he knew he looked fine in his best suit. His only suit. Big Angel had taken him to the mall and found him a dark blue two-piece with a thin chalk pinstripe. White shirt with a maroon tie. Black wing tips.

Minnie had gone ahead with Perla and Little Angel, who had waited for them in the parking lot. One more day, Big Angel thought as Lalo wheeled him across the tarmac and onto the cemetery grass. One more day to go. Till the pachanga.

“Careful, Son.”

“Gotcha, Pops.”

“Don’t dump me out.”

“That would be funny, though.”

“Have you no respect?”

“Nothin’ but! Respect for the OG!”

“OG. Does that mean ‘old geezer’?”

“Funny, Pops!”

“I know. Hurry.”

*  *  *

The hell was Pops in such a hurry for? Lalo thought the old man needed a major chill pill, like soon. Dude, what’s the rush? If Lalo was heading for the grave, he’d drag his feet, fire up a few blunts, kick back, and ease into it. Well, that’s what he was doing now, because where else was everybody going? Freakin’ hole in the dirt. Make it muy suave, homie—ain’t no race, so slow your pace.

His left forearm itched like a bitch. His newest tat: an image of his dad in better days, with that old-school Mexican mustache. It said POPS 4EVER. Cost him $260 in San Ysidro. He wanted to scratch it, but he didn’t want it to bleed into his new threads.

Lalo was the last of the boys. Life had taken the others. One was here—close to where Grandma was going to rest. It made him feel weepy. Damn, Braulio, he thought. The blood stayed on the sidewalk for days—turned brown. It was like some dead lake. He and his homies stood beside it, staring, staring, crying, vowing payback. Flies got at it when it turned to pudding in the sun.

How come nobody thought to rinse it off? Flies—man, he hated flies. Iraq was full of goddamn flies. There, blood got into the dirt, though. Puddles didn’t last long. Soaked through the dust and gravel. You could see it, like some shadow, but what you could really do was smell it.

He shook his head.

After the pudding dried, wasps came and tweaked out all over it, shaking and nibbling bits of crust off the edges of the stain. Braulio. It all blended with combat in his mind. His leg scar was burning. He wondered if his own blood was still in the dirt back there or if some dog had dug it up and licked it clean.

And his other brother, his big brother, had gone away and didn’t care to come back for a visit. Yndio. Yeah, okay, your loss. Culero.

He pushed his dad along. “I’m the good son, Pops,” he said.

Big Angel reached his hand as far over his head as he could, and Lalo gave him a soft five, sliding his fingers off his dad’s.

“Thank you, mijo,” Pops said.

Big Angel was negotiating with God: Give me one more birthday and I’ll make it good. Nobody’s ever going to forget the day. They’ll be thinking about you forever, God. All those miracles you do. Right? Like me. Like giving me one more day. You got this, God. You can do this.

His mind burned with random glory. Sunsets over La Paz. The shadows in a ruined Mexican cathedral after the workers had shoveled out the dead pigeons and dung. The infinity of folded shadows between his wife’s thighs. The whale he saw in the Sea of Cortez, rising from the water and hanging there in shattered glass skirts of sea water as if the air itself held its impossible bulk aloft, and flying fish as tiny and white as parakeets passing under its arched belly and vanishing in foam.

He looked up. It was still raining. Perla hated rain, but Big Angel knew a signal when he saw it. New life coming. Life carries on. He arched one of those brows at the Lord.

Ahead, Little Angel held an umbrella over Perla. She leaned on him as they walked across the wet grass. He didn’t fool Big Angel. He knew his baby brother had always been attracted to his wife. Who wasn’t? He wondered if, on one of those party nights, when the tequila was flowing…But, no. No way. Why get suspicious now?

Perla and Little Angel veered to the side, aiming, he knew, for Braulio’s grave. But she never made it there. As he expected, she started to collapse. In ten years she had never made it all the way across that lawn. Little Angel held her up and semi-dragged her toward the correct burial. Her wails were small across the space, and muffled. It disturbed him as if he were having some terrible dream. He turned his head, took in the vista—tombs, statues, trees, rain—then looked back at his wife and baby brother.

She had shrunk too. Just like Big Angel had. All short now. Poor Flaca, in her black dress and shawl. Her skin was still beautifully brown, though—too brown for the taste of his own mother. Mamá América had preferred paler hues. But he and Perla had earned their splotches and scars and moles and wrinkles. Her legs were veiny and bowed, but he knew damn well Little Angel had admired those legs when Perla was in her prime. So had his other brother. So had his father. But she had remained his. And he admired her exactly as she was.

She’d had to teach him where to put his tongue when they were young, but once he knew, he never missed.

“I win,” he said.

The only other umbrella they could find in the house during their mad scramble to the funeral was a silly child’s parasol. Big Angel popped it open. He tried to ignore the picture he must make as he squinted out from under the pink Hello Kitty. There was just a bit of mistiness in the air, really. Evanescent and funeral appropriate.

Big Angel looked a little harder through the mist, and there he was: the Old Man. Don Antonio’s ghost, looking dapper. It was lounging behind the tree, waiting for Mamá América to get done with this gala so they could go dancing on Saturn. Big Angel nodded at his father. His father grinned and moved back behind the tree with his finger over his lips.

“Lalo,” Big Angel said, turning back to his son. “Death is not the end.”

“Yeah? Huh. I’ll study up on that.” Looks pretty final to me, Pops.

Usually, Lalo spent the day in gym shorts and an old Van Halen tee. But there were times, like today, when the world needed to remember what kind of man he was. Big day demanded big props, and he liked good clothes to demonstrate those props. Props to Pops, he said to himself.

But this “There ain’t no death” bullshit? Yeah. No.

Death sure was the end for his brother. Death sure was the big mother-effer that took out half his boys in that Allahu-Akbar alley. Death sure as shit should have taken him instead of them and one of his balls. It just unzipped his leg, used his ball sack like a zipper pull and opened it on up from thigh to knee, around the knee and into his boot. Just to get a look. Like steak inside there. Yndio called him One Ball when he got home. Lalo didn’t know why that was so funny, but he’d laughed so hard he cried, telling his brother, “That ain’t funny, asshole!”

Death?

It took two hands to count the homies he’d lost right here in town. At McDonald’s, at the park, under the off-ramp to 805. And that cop Braulio and Joker had beaten down with chains. That dude wasn’t getting up again. He wasn’t gonna dance no more if he ever woke up.

That right there was for real.

Yeah—not a peep from any one of ’em. None of them players ever came back. That mystical Pops brujo stuff was just some cosmic old Mexican bullshit. Death not the end? Maybe so, if you counted nightmares. There were lots of chatty dead dudes in nightmares. Pops knew things, sure, but he hadn’t seen no brains on no sidewalk. Like all vatos, Hungry Man was a philosopher. Damn, his leg ached; he was hoping to get a little taste of something to ease it.

And Big Angel was thinking: These children are so stupid; they think they are the first to discover the world.

*  *  *

Lalo knew he was a sharp-dressed man in that new pinstriped suit. He was taking the raindrop hits on his semi-shaved head like a boss. It was bare to the elements since he’d taken off his beret. He imagined his face looked carved from dark wood. All Chichimeca warrior, cabrones. Firme.

His ’stache drooped a little, and the soul patch under his lower lip looked bandido as hell. His black shades revealed nothing. Though he was always glancing back and forth—watching for knuckleheads from La Mara or El Hoyo Maravilla. Them gangbangers was always looking for trouble. You couldn’t be from the wrong neighborhood.

He was furthermore engaged in watching for the damn Border Patrol. And government drones. Peeping the brown man, count on that.

Migra! For some reason his TJ homies called the Border Patrol the “Little Star of the Sea.” WTF, Lalo wanted to know. But he couldn’t go back to TJ to ask nobody. Not right now.

The Border Patrol had been sneaky lately—he heard peeps talking about BP agents staking out PTA meetings and grabbing brown parents on their way out. Later with that! He wasn’t about to have some migra em-effer grab a tío or tía. Not today.

Or himself, for that matter.

No cops. Which he called “chota,” or “placa,” in the language his father did not understand. Braulio and Yndio had taught him. Though Yndio was scarier than the other boys. So tall, so dark, and, man—those muscles. He wasn’t really what he seemed. That boy was the best of all of them. Braulio had them fooled. He was hilarious. He could pour honey on Moms and Pops. Nobody had any idea but Minnie. Wasn’t Yndio who ever got arrested. It was Lalo.

He’d already been in jail a couple of times. It was bad, the last time—feds and everything. But the worst part was making Pops look bad. Pops had warned him over and over. If he kept getting in trouble, not only would it make the family look bad but the cops would figure out he was illegal and kick his ass out of the USA. “Don’t worry, Pops. I’m a wounded veteran.” Yeah.

And he had never asked them to carry him as a baby across the Tijuana River. But there it was. Lalo just born, in 1975, and Pops decided it was time to drag them across the border to San Diego, where he’d been hiding out and working, illegal as hell. Camping out at Grandpa’s house. “Building a better life for them,” as he liked to say on weekends when he came creeping back to Mexico. Lalo was feeling sorry for himself—Dude grows up in Dago, thinking he’s a Viva La Raza American vato, and finds out all of a sudden he has to hide from the Border Patrol. Ain’t that the shits.

“Why is it always me?” he said.

“What?” Big Angel replied.

Lalo was glad he’d said something, because the way Pops was slumped in his chair, Lalo was starting to think he was asleep or dead. Better not be dead, Pops. Not on my watch.

*  *  *

Lalo forced himself to look across the wet grass at Braulio’s stone. So painful. It was all he could do at the moment. “Hey, bro,” he whispered. It would have to be enough.

It was Braulio who thought he’d figured out the immigration thing. Minnie didn’t have to worry about it. What a gringa. Homegirl was all borned up in National City, like a real American. She didn’t have to deal with these things. She could vote.

Maybe Braulio had even wanted to be good. Do good. Who knows? Get some meaning into his life along with his papers. Lalo had learned anything was possible.

Braulio, when he got kicked out of school for fighting, had stayed away from the house more and more to avoid Big Angel and Perla’s disappointment. Until 1991—when he was twenty years old. On one of those prowling days, he ran into some army recruiters. They had a small booth at the mall, like those earnest characters who hawked “magic-vision” 3-D posters and small plastic helicopters that zoomed around like alarming insects.

Braulio liked to take Lalo to the mall with him, cruise the chicks, hit up the cookies at Mrs. Fields. They usually mall-crawled with Joker, Braulio’s junior gangsta homeslice, but this day they were flying solo, just the two of them. Braulio was looking for some skinny jeans, and Joker, being a traditional vato, didn’t go for that emo shit. He would have mocked Braulio all day long for going all gabacho and trying to look like some white boy.

So they had just exited The Gap, with Security keeping a cyborg-sharp eye on them. They were snickering and trying to say dashing things to the Filipina girlies in their tiny shorts. “Damn!” was about the best they could come up with. But what mattered was how you said it. “Dayum!” Like it was made out of caramel and would stick to their lips. “Dayum, gurrrl,” with a little corner-of-the-mouth chk! and a slight shake of the head. “For reals.” Maybe a hand briefly upon the dick. Poor Lalo—he thought this was slick business.

Then Braulio saw the tank.

The Army booth had a plastic M14 mounted to the back wall and a tank on its seven-foot-tall poster, rampant in mid-launch off some distant and foreign sand dune. A young blond soldier was greatly in evidence in the foreground of this action shot, lit up like the Pet of the Month. He was giving the world a giddy thumbs-up. The blocky-headed sarge at the desk had a pen made out of a .50-caliber bullet. His teeth were as brilliant as white plastic. There was a small crowd of boys milling around the booth. From behind these boys, Braulio and Lalo heard such utterances of awe as the following popped from the boys’ lips: “Dude”; “Firme, vato”; and (for hodads too lax to say “bro”) “Brah.”

Drawn in as if by a tractor beam, Braulio rolled right out of the ’80s and into some tech future of metal and engines. Lalo felt his brother slip out of the family in the fifty steps it took to be drawn into the U.S. Army. He never understood the alchemy of that transition.

By the time Lalo caught up to him—that walk for him was a mile—Braulio had pushed through the bros and football players and was sitting at the desk, already spooling his line of barrio bullshit to the sarge.

“Like, I ain’t gonna lie, sir.”

“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ I work for a living.”

Braulio didn’t know it was a cliché, and he found it profoundly badass.

“I got some beefs,” he said.

“By ‘beef,’ I don’t assume you mean prime rib!” Ha-ha-ha-hah, he very precisely broadcast. “By ‘beef,’ I am gonna assume you’re telling me you have some gang-related issues, what with you being Hispanic and all.” Ha-ha-ha-hah. “Lookit.” He aimed his bullet pen at Braulio’s skinny face. “Best boys I ever served with were goddamned taco benders, Son. No offense.”

“Well, I got some immig—”

“Say no more.” A massive palm formed a miniature border fence in Braulio’s face. “Don’t even say the word. I don’t give a shit if you’re wet or dry, if you get my meaning. Wet or dry don’t matter shit to me. And it don’t matter to Uncle Sam.”

“For reals?”

Lalo watched the sarge grimace—he wasn’t deeply into vato English, apparently.

“If you are willing to fight for your nation,” Sarge lied, “your nation is ready to fight for you. No greater gift, and all that. Fighting for the USA. Son, you join up, we handle your papers. Hell, when you muster out, bingo, you’re American. Automatic-o.”

Braulio looked up at Lalo with real emotion in his face.

“Least we can do,” Sarge said and shook Braulio’s hand.

Braulio put in two years, most of it in Germany, never saw combat, and came back with heroin in his veins.

Papers. Right. That was some major b.s. right there, but Lalo didn’t know it, and Braulio didn’t live long enough to find out. Lots of homeboys fell for it, and later they were all squatting in veteran bunkers in Tijuana, wondering how they got kicked out of the country.

Lalo remembered the sarge when he got in trouble years later. It wasn’t no thing—just some minor “gang-related” shenanigans—but he wanted to stop it before things got any worse. At twenty-six, he felt too old to be a soldier, but the government was desperate and they were taking almost anybody. He knew, too, that a dude almost thirty would face much more trouble for petty crimes than a stupid kid. A little weed, a knife in the pocket, a street fight. He wanted to be as good as Pops. He could never be that, but he could at least be as good as his bro. The army would make him a man, something he seemed to be struggling to do for himself. So he went looking for the booth. He didn’t think there’d actually be a war. In some place he’d never even heard of.

And he didn’t expect to get blown up on his first tour in that alley smelling of burned meat. But once Pops came for him at the VA—he was walking with a cane for a while—he felt large and in charge. He was a citizen. They told him his military ID was all he needed. They were right, he believed, until he really stepped in it and was suddenly in serious trouble. And found out he’d been lied to. The recruiters, the army—everybody had said what they needed to say to get one more body on the firing line.

Even though he considered himself an American now, he still went down to Tijuana to hang with some of his friends. In 2012, he was all bold, talking himself up to his Tijuana boys. There was a dude in Colonia Independencia who wanted to get to San Diego—he had a promise of work at the Del Mar racetrack, hot-walking the race horses. He said he’d cut Lalo in, get him some cabbage if he helped him. Maybe a full-time job, depending on what the boss said. Firme! Lalo was down with that.

He became an instant expert in schooling the undocumented immigrant.

“You’re a Chicano, from Barrio Logan,” he instructed his pupil. “None of that Mexican shit. Just say that, homie. Let me do the talking.” He gave the kid a Padres cap and a pair of Vuarnet surfer shades. “When they ask you where you were born, say Detroit, Michigan.”

“Porqué?”

“It’s like, American, güey. Like, real far from TJ. ”

“Órale. I got it.”

“Say it!”

“Chicano! Logan! Detroit, Michigan. I got it! USA all de way!”

“Say ‘Detroit, man.’ Like that. Sound American.”

“Detroit, meng.”

“Not ‘meng’! Man!”

“Mang.”

“Forget it! Stick to saying ‘Chicano.’ And ‘Detroit.’ A’ight?”

“A’ight.”

“I got the rest. I’m American as hell.”

In those ancient days, they didn’t need passports to return to the U.S. Lalo drove his ’67 Impala convertible. Dropped to floor level, low ’n’ slow, in custom Candy Apple blue with white trim. He still owed Big Angel for that. He would get a job, he told himself. Any day now.

He chose the longest line of cars, figuring the border agent would be tired and easy to get by. He had his Raiders cap on his head, his Mountain Dew in his lap, had the radio tuned to oldies, had a little American flag on his antenna. When they pulled up to the booth, the guy turned out to be a woman, and she was giving Lalo the gas face before he even smiled at her.

“Citizenship?” she said.

“U.S., ma’am.” Flashed his army ID. “Purple Heart.”

“Uh-huh.” She curled one lip to warn him to mind his p’s and q’s. “What was your business in Méjico?”

“Tacos el Paisano. And, you know, shopping.”

She leaned down and stared at his homie, sucked her teeth. “You, sir? Citizenship?”

“Chicano, meng.”

“I see.”

“USA. All the güey!”

She nodded and fingered her radio.

Lalo was getting nervous. “We good?” he said, smiling like Pops to disarm her.

“Sir?” she said to his homie. “Where were you born?”

“Detroit!” he said.

She nodded and withdrew. Lalo was about to drop it into gear and book out of there when the menso beside him decided to add to it.

“Detroit,” he called. “Michoacán!”

Daaang.

They were accompanied to the secondary inspection area and cuffed forthwith. He didn’t see Moms and Pops until his trial for alien smuggling. He was as surprised as everyone else to find that, well, he was not actually a U.S. citizen. In spite of his best efforts, he brought more shame to the family when he was summarily deported.

And now he was living in his father’s garage after creeping and running across the Tijuana River in the dark like some friggin’ wetback. Things were okay in TJ, but he needed to get back to take care of Pops. As soon as Yndio came down to tell him Big Angel was sick, Lalo headed north. Getting it together. Saving a little money. He had, like, kids now. Shit to take care of. Couldn’t take another fall.

“Chále!” he said out loud.

“What?” said Big Angel.

“Nothin’, Pops.”

“Are you talking like a gangster again?”

“I was saying ‘No way.’ That’s chále. It’s, like, no.”

“No to what?”

“To death.”

“Then why don’t you speak Spanish? Why don’t you say no, like a human being?”

“Don’t be no racist now.”

“A Mexican can’t be racist to a Mexican.”

“I don’t know about that.” Lalo was looking around to see if his kids were there. “I’m a Chicano. I’m talkin’ Chicano.”

“Didn’t I tell you that the word ‘Chicano’ came from ‘chicanery’?”

Bullshit, Lalo thought. “Here we are, Pops,” he said, parking his father. Freakin’ culture clash up in here.

*  *  *

Lalo smiled as they beheld the tent top, erected to keep rain off the mourners: the rule was that everybody see Big Angel was the captain and his soldiers were hopping to. Why the hell not? Life was good. He was proud to wheel his father across the lawn.

“The eagle has landed,” he said.

He hit the little brake lever with his foot so Pops wouldn’t roll around.

Big Angel craned around and looked at his son’s nice slacks. His jacket. It was too bad about the tattoos. That damned cholo cross thing on his hand.

He had thought this about his son’s new suit: I want the boy to look good at my funeral. I want Lalo to look at the pictures and feel proud that he was dressed to the nines. Know he dressed like a Mexicano, not a vato. And know that his old man picked that suit out, that the old man had set the dress code for his own burial. And he will feel awe.

That was all Big Angel ever wanted—to inspire awe.

The grave was a small open shaft among flat headstones laid out like a mosaic in the lawn. Big Angel’s siblings gathered, along with those others who had stuck around to pay their respects to the familia. MaryLú, César, Little Angel.

Various feuds and internecine scandals were held in abeyance for the day. It kept them busy, otherwise, shaking their heads over one another’s minor atrocities. Gathering in clandestine kitchen meetings to scissor their victims in absentia. Their victims were as tattered as abused coats when they were done. Allegiances shifted like the seasons. Rhetorical weapons ever at the ready.

Minerva was standing over her brother’s stone, wiping the rain and the leaves off it. As if she could protect him now. In emerald light, beneath the melancholy leaves of the maple. Her hair gleamed with a thousand small diamonds of rain.

Little Angel stood next to her and bent his head.

“Minnie,” he said.

“My big bro, Tío.”

The stone said: BRAULIO DE LA CRUZ, 1971–2006.

“It’s almost ten years, Tío.”

She sniffled. He handed her MaryLú’s Kleenex from the funeral.

“I come over here sometimes to talk to him. He was such a brat.” She wiped her nose. “I used to eat standing up, right? Breakfast. When I was still going to school. He’d sneak in and scream in my ear and make me throw Cheerios all over the kitchen.” She laughed. “Fool,” she told the stone.

“Sorry I wasn’t here,” Little Angel said.

“I’m glad you weren’t here. It was bad.” She looked around. “You don’t need this stuff. It’s better you have your world far away from here.” She thought for a moment. “Sorry I drunk texted you.”

He patted her back. “Made me feel special.”

Little Angel had been terrified of Braulio. The kid had been skinny, but muscled like Bruce Lee. Sometimes he’d had a look like a Doberman, trembling before it attacked.

“Is it nice up there where you live?” Minnie asked.

“It’s beautiful, yeah,” he said. “And Bigfoot lives there.”

“You crack me up, Tío.” She hugged him with one arm. “I hate this town sometimes,” she said.

“Come to Seattle.”

“Nah. This is home. I belong here.”

They turned away.

“Who’s gonna run things if I go?” she said.

“There is that.”

“Tell you what, though,” she said. “I wish my big bro was here. The biggest bro. He and Daddy don’t like each other right now.”

Little Angel looked at her.

“Yndio,” she said. “He made…lifestyle choices.”

“I see.” But he didn’t, not really. Little Angel forgave himself for not remembering the details, if he’d ever heard them. He didn’t want to hear them.

But apparently Minnie wasn’t done with him. She produced her cell phone. “Check out his Facebook, Tío,” she said. She opened the profile page. The photo was a picture of Marilyn Manson from a few years back in his full cross-dressing outfit with a pair of rubber breasts. The name listed was Yndio Geronimo. Not sure how to respond, Little Angel said, “Uh, wow.”

“Right?” said Minnie. “But read what it says.”

Non-cisgendered, non-heteronormative cultural liberation warrior.

“That’s my bro.”

“Minnie, I’m not even sure what all that means. But I can see why your father can’t deal with it.”

“You think Dad has problems with it? You should ask my mom. She acts like he’s dead to her. She makes believe she doesn’t even miss him. Then we sneak out to eat pancakes with him so Daddy don’t know.”

He tried to come up with avuncular wisdom and ended up making a whee sound, then clearing his throat.

Frankly, Little Angel had barely registered Yndio’s presence. Neither of those two boys had seemed like real family to him. And when Yndio drifted in and out of the mix over the years, Little Angel had barely noticed. Bad uncle, he thought.

He watched Minnie walk over to her man and take his arm. He didn’t remember if they were married or not.

Little Angel went to the back of the crowd and assumed his position. El Yndio, he thought. Some kind of actor, or model. Hair to his ass, that much Little Angel remembered. He had given the kid Bowie records. Big Angel and Perla hadn’t liked that. He suddenly wondered if he had been a catalyst for this sexual revolution. And if he had been, was it a good thing or a bad thing?

A family inheritance, he thought. Endless drama. This was why he lived in Seattle. Family. It was all too complicated.

*  *  *

Big Angel whispered to his mother, “Forgive me if I have no tears to spare for you, Mother. I am down to my last ones. I know you understand.”

rain

Most mourners were jammed under the tent. They pressed forward to lay a hand on the blue vase of ashes, sitting on a small folding platform. Beautiful wreaths surrounded the open hole. More were coming—husbands of the various ladies trudged along carrying the flowers from the Bavarian chapel. A UPS man hauled out wreaths delivered from Mexico. No priest, though.

There was a small blue tarp over the raw dirt pile. La Minnie came to it, wiping away tears. She was as beautiful as the Angels had ever seen her. Her dude stood awkwardly behind her, hands clasped in front of his zipper as if he needed to pee.

Little Angel saw it even if they didn’t: she was the new backbone of the family. She was wearing a black and blue outfit, and her hair was a cascade of curls and waves, and her nails were two-toned. She was saying “Dios te bendiga, Grandma” to the urn. Her guy stared at her like he’d been hit with a chair in a wrestling match. The Look of Love.

Big Angel watched. He couldn’t remember the guy’s name. What the hell? He’d known that guy for years. Then he realized he couldn’t remember the name of the guy on TV either. That black guy on the nightly news. With the glasses. And he couldn’t remember the name of Perla’s sister Lupita’s pinche Americano husband in the fuchsia shirt. Christ. Sorry, Lord.

He cast about, surveilling the crowd. The girls had mostly come in high heels. They were sinking into the mud, picking up fallen leaves with their heels like groundskeepers in parks with spike sticks. Lupita unwittingly displayed three leaves mounted at fetching angles upon her left shoe.

He noticed some of the women were standing on the flat headstones to keep from sinking into the lawn. He shook his head. He imagined dead men lying beneath them, looking up their skirts.

La Gloriosa stood far back under her own umbrella in reasonable flats and a black Burberry overcoat. Huge French sunglasses. Slightly angry. Weeping softly. She wept for them all. Wept for herself. There was a grave about a hundred yards from this family plot that she dared not visit. She didn’t even look in that direction. Yes, Braulio was a great tragedy, but he wasn’t the only one to die that night. She turned her back to that other grave. Then withstood the full assault of guilt and shame at her cowardice. She watched Little Angel. She had always thought he was a pretty boy. Mexican women, she reminded herself, women of a certain age, could not resist blue eyes. She curled her lip. Estúpida, she thought. It was only her broken heart wanting what it didn’t need.

He was flirting with her, she thought. Todavía lo tienes, she told herself. She tugged the coat tighter—old curves, maybe, but still curves. Whenever she glanced at him, she caught his eyes turning away, like she’d interrupted his staring. What a child. Any real man would lock eyes with her and make her blush. And once she’d blushed, he’d come stand beside her.

She wanted him to claim her. Just for the afternoon. Not leave her out here alone and wet like some bedraggled puppy.

There was a time when they all would have been at her feet. She could have kicked each one away. The least he could do now was to offer her his arm and accompany her. She shook out her hair. In case he looked again.

*  *  *

Middle brother Julio César and his djinn of a wife, Paz, stood beside sister MaryLú—César standing guard between the warring women. A one-man DMZ. His siblings never stopped calling him Donald Duck—it was an old joke. He couldn’t help the sound of his voice.

It was a toss-up whether the women could make it through the burial ceremony without fighting. Whenever Paz leaned over to cast a poisonous glance at César’s big sister, César gallantly moved forward and blocked the eye punch with his chin. His exquisite second ex-wife stood apart with his sons and didn’t look at him. The first wife? On a ranch somewhere in Durango. Big Angel saw all this, and he saw his brother’s thoughts etched on his face: What the hell was I thinking? Too bad for you, Big Angel thought. I stayed with my Flaca the whole time. He held his chin up.

He had already bought a double plot not far from Mamá’s. On the other side of the little maple tree shading her. Beside Braulio. He and Perla would lie together. So, no peeking up skirts for him. FLAQUITO Y FLAQUITA the stone would say, with their names and dates beneath. Perla intended, however, to lie about her birth date when they did her stone.

They would spend forever side by side. And the rest of his fallen children would one day slumber around them all, a constellation of extinguished stars.

*  *  *

Lalo stepped over to Little Angel. “S’up, Tío?” he whispered.

“Doing my duty.”

“I hear that.”

“She was good to me. Your grandma used to tell me ‘I am your mother number two.’”

Lalo did a little Snagglepuss laugh from the side of his mouth, tiny ratchets of appreciation: skitch-skitch-skitch.

“I didn’t ever meet your moms, did I?”

“Ah no.”

“She white.”

“As can be. So, you all right?”

“Yeah, Tío. Large and in charge.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” Little Angel enthused with imagined barrio brio.

“Yo, Tío. Where’s your wife at?”

“Gone.”

“Like gone gone? Or dead?”

“Gone. Her and all my furniture.”

“Dang. She white.”

“Yes.”

“Son,” said Lalo, “go brown next time. Don’t be no race traitor.” Skitch-skitch-skitch. “Down and brown!” Lalo nudged him with his elbow.

“Órale,” Little Angel said, for what else could he say?

Lalo laughed softly and knocked knuckles with him. He pulled up his sleeve and showed him the POPS tattoo.

Little Angel nodded sagely. “I should get one of those,” he said.

“Yours will say ‘bro.’”

They watched the sad crowd.

“This family,” Little Angel noted, “sure does talk a lot. I can’t keep track of what they’re saying. Or who they are.” He showed Lalo his notebook, which greatly amused his nephew.

“Talk, yeah,” he finally said to his uncle. “Talk’s all we got.” With that, Lalo went back to his bodyguard position behind the wheelchair.

*  *  *

There came a little bustle, the crowd parted, and poor Ookie Contreras stumbled out. He still played with Barbie dolls, most of them naked and some beheaded. Ookie was in a huge suit jacket somebody had given him. A brown fedora from some ancient tío, cocked against the rain. He could have been thirteen, and he could have been seventy. His eyes were crossed. Little scraggly pubic chin beard. They called him Ookie because he could never say “cookie.” And that homie loved a cookie. But he was infamous in the neighborhood for creeping into people’s houses, looking for Legos to steal. Ookie loved Legos more than he loved Oreos or headless Barbies.

He stepped up to the urn. “Gramma,” he said. “You be the greatest gramma anybody ever seen.” He looked around at the crowd. “Right?” he said.

“Right!” homies shouted.

“Did I do good?”

“Good job, Ookie!” Big Angel called. “We are proud of you, mijo!”

Inspired, Ookie took off his hat. “Big Angel,” he cried. “You the best Big Angel I ever seen. Sorry you got to die!”

Stunned silence. A cough.

“We all have to die, Ookie,” Big Angel said. “But not today.”

Ookie smiled. “Was she my gramma?” he said.

“No, Ookie,” said La Minnie.

“Am I your cousin?”

“Neighbors, Ookie.”

Ookie pumped his fist one time. Then remembered to wipe a pretend tear from his face before he wandered off.

“Foxy lady,” he said. “Purple haze.”

Little Angel allowed himself to breathe. Another disaster averted. Family was too much responsibility. That thousand-mile buffer zone was the only thing that worked.

An actual grandson urged his fourteen-year-old daughter forward, and she played a song on her violin. The vida loca faction could not believe a homegirl played violin. They approved. That was badass right there. Her dad had pushed her into it because he wanted her to join a mariachi group. But she wanted to play classical and had managed to get into her school’s orchestra. Debussy gave her tingles, not Selena. The vatos would kill for her. It was the college kids, all ironic and hipster, who snickered at every sour note.

“Beautiful, mija,” Minnie called.

They clapped.

A group of men from the family stepped up and sang a tremulous ballad that made everybody choke up. They all had to look away. They all stared at the rain. They held one another’s hands.

“Shit’s grim,” noted Lalo, who did not enjoy crying.

Big Angel looked behind him, trying to find his baby brother.

Lots of the youngsters were in the New American Pose: heads bowed, hands at mid chest, looking like monks at prayer, texting their asses off on their smartphones. They snuck selfies and posted them to their social media: ME, AT MY ABUELA’S FUNERAL. People with names like La Wera and Viejo Bear were saying things like SO FUKN SORRY, MIJA!:-(

Big Angel found Little Angel. He was also texting.

*  *  *

4:48 p.m.

Back at the house. How could you end a whole era and bury a century of life and be home before suppertime? Big Angel could not reconcile himself to this dirty deal they had all been dealt. Death. What a ridiculous practical joke. Every old person gets the punch line that the kids are too blind to see. All the striving, lusting, dreaming, suffering, working, hoping, yearning, mourning, suddenly revealed itself to be an accelerating countdown to nightfall.

When you had seventy years ahead of you, nothing mattered, though you thought it all mattered greatly. But you didn’t really feel the pressing need to do anything about it. Suddenly, though, there comes a birthday when you think: I have twenty years at best. And those years slide into the dark until you think: I have fifteen. I have ten. I have five. And your wife tells you, “Live, don’t fret. You could be hit by a bus tomorrow! Nobody knows when the end comes.”

But you know she lies in the dark beside you counting the years she has left, even if she won’t admit it. Wondering if every twinge in her left shoulder is the final heart attack. And then you find that you have no years left. You have days.

That is the prize: to realize, at the end, that every minute was worth fighting for with every ounce of blood and fire. And the majority of them poured down the toilet, unheeded. He had seen only sixty-nine Christmas mornings. Goddamn it! Sorry, Lord. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

So you fill your hours with hubbub. Like now. The house seemed to be bulging elastically like an old cartoon—music and dust flying out through the gaping junctures of the bouncing, jiving walls.

Big Angel surveyed his domain.

*  *  *

The kids had paid for a tent of their own: a wedding reception company was spreading a white vinyl roof over Big Angel’s porch and part of his backyard on tall aluminum legs. They were setting up long folding tables. Folding chairs. In the open far back, a small stage with amps for various testimonials or impromptu song recitals. Under blue plastic tarps.

Cars were jammed all down the block, but there were always families gathering in the hood, so it was hard to tell who was there for Big Angel’s house and who was hanging down the block watching NFL highlights or having a tamale fest. The minivan was parked half in the driveway. They’d wheeled Big Angel in through the garage—Lalo didn’t like it because when they hit the remote, the whole front wall of his bedroom rose and exposed his bed and personal stuff to the street. There were usually a couple of trucks in the driveway, so nobody really saw his small empire. But his Chargers posters fell down.

It was a classic Southern California ranch-style house, built in 1958. In a Mexican neighborhood south of San Diego, between National City and Chula Vista. Lomas Doradas. It used to be a sailor’s neighborhood—old Anglo swabs from various wars, and dockworkers from the National City boatyards. Basque tuna fishermen. Gradually, Filipinos moved in, and they gave way to the raza.

All the houses had bars on the windows, which scared outsiders but which nobody from there even saw. None of the grannies on the street wanted some imagined pachuco to break in and steal their Franklin Mint collector plates. John Wayne and angels defending little blond kids with flaming swords hung on kitchen walls all down the street.

Palm trees. Beige walls with bits of brick trim. Asphalt-and-gravel shingles on the roofs. Each house, 1,250 square feet. Five models, each turned at a different angle on its slab for variety. Lantana and geraniums, depressed birds of paradise, cacti. A Joshua tree leaned forward in front of Big Angel’s in a small circle of stones in a slim lawn.

All the houses had four bedrooms and a living room, two bathrooms and a nice kitchen-dining area by the sliding door to the quarter-acre backyard. And myriad garage kingdoms developed as unemployed children came home to Mamá.

América, pues.

At Big Angel’s, a concrete patio faced the backyard, which swooped up a bank taller than the house. Drought-slaughtered ivy and patches of pickleweed and one psychotic nopal cactus that was well on its way to growing into some prehistoric tree. If you went up there above the cactus, you could look south and watch the lights on the Tijuana radio towers blink. In the dark, even Tijuana looked like a scatter of diamonds.

Big Angel had paid for it all.

There was a second building back there, the size and shape of another one-car garage. It was known as Big Angel’s workshop, but nobody had messed with it for years. It had a padlock on the door. They had occasionally raised chickens in the backyard, and the back wall of the workshop was the wall of the coop where they had mounted the sleeping and laying boxes with their straw nests. Fresh eggs every day. And Perla was happy to behead chickens for her pot without blinking. Until the neighbors complained, and the city came along and removed the coops.

Lalo called the neighbors “chicken snitches.”

Perla sat at a table on the patio and rubbed her aching knees. Her small flock of doggies was scuttling around like animated empanadas on meth. “Ay, qué perritos,” she said. They were Chiweenies. Chihuahua/wiener-dog mixes. La Minnie called them “naked mole rats” since she took her kids to the zoo often and knew these things. Minnie had even been to the art museum.

Perla watched the dogs occasionally leave the earth and pogo around the legs of the workers.

She was not going to think about that cemetery for the rest of the weekend.

“Mija,” she called to dear Minnie. “Minerva! Café, sí? Por favor, mi amor.”

Minerva, thought La Minnie. Why did she have to have the weird name?

“You got it, Ma!” she called. “Comin’ right up!”

“Qué?”

Perla had only lived in the United States for forty-one years—she couldn’t be expected to learn English overnight.

“Gracias, mija.”

For example, when she tried to call her daughter “honey,” she still made it into Spanish. She called her “la honis.” In her mind, “honey” started with a Mexican j and ended in a long e. La jo-nees.

Perla sent a slow sigh upward to Our Lady of Guadalupe. She knew that real prayers, women’s prayers, didn’t even need words. What mother didn’t understand her daughter’s sighs? Her prayer said: This party is too much pressure. The Virgin would just nod. She knew all about complicated males.

Perla’s sisters were helping, of course. Lupita, Gloriosa. They were always with her and Big Angel. For holidays, funerals, weddings, births, baptisms, birthdays. For coffee. After divorces. Sitting in at supper or breakfast or cracking a fresh bottle or playing dominoes.

She was watching the bustle, and she watched the little kids run around the yard with the Chiweenie mole rats. Lupita ran the kitchen. La Gloriosa was late—it was her task to lead the children in their mad dashes and to keep the flow moving. Gloriosa was the directora de eventos. It was all a dance. She was always late. La Gloriosa—when you were glorious, you did what you had to do. The world could wait.

Perla lit a cigarette. She had been quitting smoking for fifty years. She shrugged. Even La Gloriosa still smoked sometimes.

Perla squinted.

Who were these little kids? Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren. Nieces. Grand-nieces. Neighbors. There was a tall black kid lounging in a corner.

She called Lalo. “Mijo! Juan! No, Tonio! No! Digo, Tato. Cómo te llames, pues. Ven!” She couldn’t remember anybody’s name anymore, and she didn’t particularly care.

Lalo was in his garage, watching Big Angel’s old VHS tapes. There was, like, a whole library in cardboard boxes. He was in the middle of the ’80s monster movie C.H.U.D. He paused it. Rolled out of his garage and ambled over. He had shed his suit and was in his Chargers jersey and giant gangsta shorts. Black Chuck Taylors, no socks. He told a little fat boy, “Yo, mijo, don’t be a chud!”

He towered over Perla.

“It’s Lalo, Ma. Not Tato. Whazzup?” He kissed her head.

Minnie brought out the coffee, said, “Move, huevo head.”

“I ain’t got no huevo head. Check yourself, puppet!”

“It’s like a soft-boiled egg,” Minnie noted.

“I’ma kick you.”

In Spanish, Perla said, “Who is that negro?”

Lalo said, “That’s your nephew, Ma.”

“What’s he got on his head?”

“Padres hat.”

“What’s his name?”

“Rodney.”

Minnie put the cup of coffee down before her. “Move, cue ball,” Minnie told Lalo and rubbed his shaved head.

“Puppet,” he said, “be careful nobody don’t cut your strings.”

“Shut up, boy. Damn.”

“Life is wonderful, Minerva,” Perla told her. “Full of many wonders. I see ghosts.”

“Cool, Ma.” La Minnie went back inside to slave in the kitchen. Slightly baffled, but that was what the old-timers did to you. Bad enough Daddy was talking crazy, but now Moms was doing it.

“Don’t be no chudhole, Minnie!” Lalo called. He kept scratching at his POPS 4EVER tattoo.

“Pobre Rodney,” Perla said. “Is he uncomfortable?”

“’Bout what?” Lalo said. “He’s, like, freakin’ Rodney. He’s always been here, Ma.”

“I was never white enough for your father’s family,” Perla told him. “I mean, she was never white, Mamá América. Brown, como café con leche. But she was whiter than me. O sí, mijito. I heard her calling me an India. I wasn’t deaf, you know!” She sipped her coffee. “Too hot,” she noted. “Who made this? Anyway. Your grandmother never approved of me. She thought I was low class. She called me a prostitute.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. “Dang,” he said, then went back to his movie in the garage.

He was trying to just shut it all out. His son had called him an hour before. They knew who did it.

“Did what?” Lalo had asked.

“Offed Tío Braulio.”

“No shit?”

“Word, Pops,” his son said. “So whatchu gon’ do about it?”

And Lalo said, “Me?”

*  *  *

5:00 p.m.

Little Angel parked down the block. The neighborhood was damp in the gutters but habitually sun flogged and dusty looking. The grass was yellow, and the walls looked faded. He had grown up on the white side of town. The kids in school had thought his family was French.

But his house could have been here: 1,200-square-foot box. Bougainvillea. Big Wheels and scooters abandoned in driveways. Basketball hoops over the garage doors. Similar class stratum, the professor inside him lectured. Music was different, though.

He walked up the street. Felt like a camera was watching him. Like eyes were at all the windows. Locals peeping the Crown Vic, thinking: Pigs! He hung his head and slumped his shoulders, as if he could become shorter and somehow invisible.

Who’s that gabacho?

Oh, it’s the gringo-Mex.

Dude looks like a narc.

He always felt self-conscious just walking in the front door of Big Angel and Perla’s house like everybody else. As if he hadn’t earned a membership yet to their club. But whenever he knocked or rang the bell, they all scolded him. What kind of brother knocks? So he manned up and opened the heavy steel-mesh security grate and stepped inside. People lounged around the big table set up in the living room. Baseball caps with straight bills. Cigarettes.

La Gloriosa had just gotten there and stood in the bright dining alcove, backlit, hands on hips. Her Spanx were killing her. Her skirt was golden and flared off her brown legs. He saw the shadows of those legs through the fabric. Her hair, piling on her shoulders, was electric with highlights, like glitters on a sea of ink.

She eyed him. He grinned. She was as magnificent as a velvet painting of an Aztec goddess in a taco shop. She had muscles.

“Mi amor,” he said.

“Ay, tú.” La Gloriosa had no time for foolishness. She tipped her head back, dismissing him with her chin. Ringlets flew: a rebuke.

He answered with a quick bounce of his eyebrows.

Her head tipped down, ringlets cascading over her shoulders: a possible reconciliation. She looked up under her brows like a she-wolf. He flushed, made his eyes dewy.

Her left eyebrow rose slowly and lodged. He looked at her collarbone. Down, but not indecently. Eyes rose slowly to meet hers. He smiled with one side of his mouth.

“Don’t be naughty,” she said.

Perla came in from the backyard, looking for more coffee. “Es mi baby!” she cried, staggering over to Little Angel and petting his face. She looked back and forth between them. “Not this again,” she said.

La Gloriosa made a moochy-lip mouth gesture at him that crinkled her nose, then she vanished behind the pantry to rattle things in the sink. In mock irritation. If he had been born with a crest, his feathers would have risen and he would have flown out to find her a pretty twig.

“Tu hermano está en su cama,” Perla said, gesturing to the back room where Big Angel rested. “Always in bed.”

Little Angel said, “He must be exhausted.”

“Siempre. Pobre Flaco.”

She was looking around, her empty coffee cup hanging off her finger. He took it from her and led her to the little aluminum table and sat her down. “I’ll get it,” he said.

“Tenk yous,” she said. “Leche, please. Y azúcar.”

“Sí.”

“Sugar—lots of sugar.”

La Gloriosa’s back was to him as she scrubbed last night’s pots. He stepped up to her and caught a sweet sniff as he leaned around her to get to the coffee pot on the counter. She felt him leaning in, and she got a blue bolt of electricity right up her neck, but she showed nothing.

“Excuse me,” he said, putting a hand on her back.

She jumped. “I am sixty years old,” she whispered.

“Sixty’s the new forty,” he said. “And I’m almost fifty. So you’re younger than I am.”

She had to think about that one.

The coffeepot said, Gloop.

She squinted at him. “Don’t play with me,” she said.

He stood there, coffee steaming. She was close enough that he could feel her body heat. She smelled like almonds and vanilla.

He could tell she did not remember that once, when they were both many years younger, she had drunk too much Thunderbird at a rare gathering at his parents’ house. She had been showing his mother Latin dance moves. La cumbia. Rumba. Cha-cha. She was hilariously pickled by the end of the night, and she had found him in the hall outside the bedroom used for coats and had leaned on him and said, “Kiss me good night, you bad boy.”

He gave her a teenage peck.

“That is not how you kiss a woman,” she said. And kissed him on the mouth. “That’s how you kiss a woman.” And grabbed her coat and was gone like some apparition from beyond.

“I am not playing,” he said now.

“You think it’s so easy!”

“It is easy.”

“O sí, cabrón? And what do you want from me?” She blew hair out of her face. What a pendejo!

“Do you want me to stop?” he said.

She banged a pot in the sink. Stared out the kitchen window at the vatos standing around in the driveway. She shook out her curls. Sighed. “No,” she said.

He took the coffee and the Carnation milk can and the sugar to Perla.

“Instant?” she said.

“No. Coffeepot.”

She made a face. These old-timers, they lived for instant coffee.

Perla didn’t even look at him. Simply gestured at Gloriosa with her eyebrows. “Picaflor,” she said.

“Me?”

She blew on her coffee.

He thought about how he’d explain that to his students. One of those Mexican phrases. Honeybee? No. Bumblebee? Nope. Hummingbird? A creature who goes from flower to flower, sampling the nectar.

He cleared his throat. “I—”

“Go talk to your brother,” Perla said.

*  *  *

First, he stopped in the living room and inspected Big Angel’s citizenship papers. Big Angel kept them in a little frame on the wall for everyone to admire. Miniature American flags tucked in the corners. A faded picture of the kids—Yndio and Braulio. Little Angel squinted; he had been beautiful, that Braulio. Cherubic. And little Lalo all cheeky and curly. Minnie, apparently, hadn’t been born yet.

The family portrait hung beside that. It was in a huge white frame with gold filigree vines carved into the wood. A color photo from Sears. Mamá América holding a photograph of Dad. And Big Angel, MaryLú, and César gathered around her. There it was. They hadn’t thought to invite him. There was no slight intended. Which made it feel worse somehow.

Minnie came up beside him and looked at it.

“The whole family, Tío,” she said.

“Most of it.”

She looked at him, back at the picture, at him, at the picture. “Oh,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Oops,” she said.

“A minor oversight,” he said with chipper self-pity.

“You got an identity crisis, huh?”

“Secret’s out.”

“You ain’t alone, feeling alone like that. Some of us know what that feels like.” She went out the front door and wandered down the street.

He walked the fourteen steps back to the bedroom door.

*  *  *

It terrified him.

Little Angel was certain his brother would be dead. Or he would be in some gruesome medical crisis. Or would smell somehow, some embarrassing stink that would upset them both.

But none of these things were true. Big Angel was sitting up, with his back against a pile of pillows. He wore a bright white undershirt and comfy pajama pants. Thick white gym socks on his feet. He smelled like baby powder and a little sweat.

Big Angel was addressing a small clutch of ninth graders, who stood at the foot of his bed, looking awkward. Each of the girls had one arm folded across her belly and clamped to her ribs with the other arm dangling as if lifeless. The boys had the ends of their fingers stuffed into their pants pockets.

Big Angel was saying: “A panda bear walked into a restaurant.”

“Yeah, Pops?”

“Sí. And he sat at the counter and asked for food and a Pepsi.”

“So what happened, Pops?”

“He ate, drank, pulled out a pistol, and shot the cook.”

“What!”

“As he left, he shouted, ‘Look it up on Google!’” Big Angel was grinning like a mad street person, eyes glittering and feral.

The kids looked at one another.

“Did they look it up, Pops?”

“Of course. Do you know what it said?”

They shook their heads.

“It said, ‘Panda bear. A vegetarian mammal that eats shoots and leaves.’” He laughed.

They looked at one another again.

“I get it,” said one fat boy.

“Out, mocosos,” Little Angel said.

They shuffled out.

“I ain’t got boogers, Tío,” the fat boy protested.

Newspapers were scattered all over the bed. Big Angel had circled an infamous picture about a hundred times. A dead toddler facedown in European surf. Drowned and cast off like a little bag of unwanted clothes. Big Angel saw Little Angel looking at it. He picked up the paper, folded it carefully, and set it on his bedside table.

“Nobody wants the immigrant,” Big Angel said. “He drowned, that boy.”

“I know.”

“Trying to get a new life.”

“I know.”

“Our people look like that,” Big Angel said. “In the desert.”

Our people. “I’ll have to think about that one,” Little Angel said. It occurred to him that maybe Big Angel wasn’t a Republican after all. He realized he knew very little about his big brother. “Seems like we’ve been here a really long time,” he said. “Seems there are very few de La Cruz bodies in the desert.” He couldn’t stop himself, though his brother’s face darkened. “We’re pretty much Americans now, right? I mean, this is a post-immigration family. By what, almost fifty years?”

“Yeesus.”

“I’m still Mexican,” Little Angel said. “Mexican-American? But let’s face it, I don’t live in, what, Sinaloa.”

Big Angel wiped his lips. He had thought they were wet, but they were chapped. “Must be nice, Carnal,” he said. “To choose who you are.”

Little Angel looked off into a fascinating corner of the room. “Let’s not get into this today.”

“What?”

“Your ‘I’m more Mexican than you are’ games.”

“I thought you just said you were a gringo.”

“Eat me,” Little Angel muttered.

“Culero.”

They were suddenly eleven.

“Okay.” Big Angel shrugged one shoulder. “I’ll be dead tomorrow, so no problem.”

Jeezuz Jiminy Jumpin’ Christ. Little Angel smiled warmly.

Big Angel patted the bed. “Sit.”

Apparently the ethnic civil war had passed like one of the tardy little rain clouds speeding east to collapse against the Cuyamaca Mountains.

“Carnal!” Big Angel said, eyes suddenly as bright as little black campfires. “Remember how my father peeled oranges?”

Little Angel nodded. “I remember our father, yeah.”

Big Angel took the hint. “Our father. Put chile powder on oranges.”

“And salt.”

“Tajín!”

They found this funny for some reason.

“He peeled oranges in one long strip,” Big Angel shouted. “He made snakes out of the peel. Every time.”

They laughed some more. It felt good to laugh. Mindless. Safe.

“He told me they were tapeworms,” Little Angel said.

“Did I ever tell you about—” Big Angel blurted, and he was off on a binge of storytelling. Jokes and sorrows. Strange tales of their ancestors. Questions about Seattle. When he began a detailed tour of the many medicine bottles on his table, and doses and times of administering them, Little Angel gave up standing there awkwardly and climbed into bed beside his brother.

silence

good talk

oysters

a day without pain