Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
That’s the fourth knock since I started counting them. There were probably twenty before. I keep eyeing the door, wondering why Mom isn’t answering. Instead, she’s pacing back and forth, a worried look on her face.
I’m on the floor. Playing with my green plastic army men. They surround my teepee. One that I made from brown construction paper. It’s easy, you just make a funnel, tape it in place, and flip it over. The general, who stands upright and holds a pair of binoculars, shouts, “We know you’re in there, Opin! Come out with your hands up!”
But my red plastic Indian isn’t in there. I knew they’d be coming. I outsmarted them. The same way my ancestors outsmarted the soldiers for hundreds of years. I took a high position and posted up on the shoulder of my brown stuffed bear. I pull out my bow and arrow, and aim for the general. You take out the leader, and all his men will panic. Panic brings chaos. Chaos makes you disorganized. And disorganized troops lose battles. I fire. The arrow rips through the air and descends on my target. It hits him right in the face. I tip him over with my finger. He’s dead. I then load up my bow and fire at his second in command. The arrow lodges into his chest. Dead. The soldiers run in circles, firing the rifles and pistols toward me. But my stuffed bear mountain takes the bullets, keeping me safe. I fire more arrows, killing more soldiers. They drop like flies.
But just before I climb down to finish the remaining soldiers off with my tomahawk, my mom yanks me up, scattering all my enemies.
“Fill this bag with everything you want to take,” Mom says, and hands me a black garbage bag.
“Take? Take where?” I ask.
“Opin! Just do it.”
I don’t know what’s going on. Why would I put all my stuff in a trash bag? “Is this a game?” I ask.
“Yes, Opin. It’s a game. There’s a Texas Ranger on the other side of that door, and he wants to take us away and put us on a reservation,” she says.
“What’s a Texas Ranger?” I ask.
“White people hired by the government to track down and kill Native Americans,” she says.
“Then let’s fight him and kill him,” I say, finding this game kind of fun but also wondering why Mom looks so scared.
“We kill him, and we go to jail,” Emjay says from behind me. “I’ve already considered it, but Mom says no.”
I turn to see him. He looks upset. Very upset. He’s holding on to two stuffed trash bags.
The door opens. The apartment complex manager did us dirty and gave the Texas Ranger a key to our door. He steps inside. He’s a big man. I suspect he could fit about five full trash bags in his belly. He wears a black uniform, and his shiny badge sparkles over his heart. His skin is so pale that it’s no longer white, but pink. Like the sun touched him for only a minute and he began to burn. I notice the rolls on his neck. He has a fat neck, with little red bumps on it. It’s ugly, like his face. A thick orangish mustache hides his lips. In his hand is a piece of paper. Probably another peace treaty he’ll say he agrees to but then will go back on the moment he leaves.
“You can’t come in here,” Mom says to him.
“You had until five P.M. to have everything out and to vacate the premises. It’s now five fifteen.”
“We have nowhere to go. This is our home,” Mom says, and I’m just now beginning to realize that we are not playing a game.
“You should have thought about that before not paying rent,” he says.
“I’m just a little short. I’m looking for another job.”
“She’s over two months short,” the apartment manager chimes in.
“We can’t be evicted. That will make getting another place impossible,” Mom says.
“Leave now, and I won’t report it,” the apartment manager says.
“If there’s someone you need to call, to help you put all this stuff in storage or something, make the call now,” the officer says.
Mom looks at Emjay, then at me, then back to the man. “There’s no one to call,” she says.
“I’ll give you thirty more minutes to pack up. After that, I’m locking the door.”
The officer steps out of the apartment. The manager follows him. I turn to the Christmas tree filled with all the Carl’s Jr. ornaments my mom got from work. The yellow star, smiling, wearing a hat and scarf. The white snow star, also smiling. The brown reindeer star with the red nose. Then I look at the two presents under the tree. Wrapped and ready to be ripped open. My mom turns our little TV off. I stare at the couch. And the coffee table we found at a yard sale for only seven bucks. There’s no way all these things are going to fit in a trash bag.
I kneel down and scoop up my army men and my Indian. They’re all dead. Buried together. I stuff them in the black bag and stare at my bear. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. I put it in the bag.
“How could you let this happen?” Emjay asks Mom.
“What do you want me to do, son?” Mom says with tears dropping down her cheeks.
“Stop it. Don’t let them do this,” he says, and punches the wall, indenting it with a fist-shaped hole.
Emjay storms into the bedroom he and I share. He slams the door. Mom doesn’t follow him. She begins to but stops when we hear him tearing the posters off the wall. He tries to make it loud, to cover his crying. But we both hear it. No amount of poster shredding can cover that noise.
Then it hits me … There’s no way our bed is going to fit in our car. Where will we sleep? Where will I poop?
I’m five. Emjay is seven, turning eight, and my mom is thirty-one. But right now, it feels like we are all newborns. Starting over. From scratch. We’re helpless babies. “Why are they doing this, Mama?” I ask.
She bends down to me and brushes the hair off my face and tucks the loose strands behind my ear. “Because, Opin, this is America … And America loves taking away homes from people like us,” she says. “They’ve been doing it since they got here.”
“Can’t we fight back?” I ask.
“We’re outnumbered.”
“What are we going to do?” I ask.
“Survive. We do what all our ancestors did. We look for somewhere else to live until they come find us again,” she says.
“Like hide-and-seek?”
“Yeah, like hide-and-seek,” she says.
Maybe this is a game after all. A really difficult game that takes a whole lifetime to play and a whole lifetime to win.
“I got some room in my suitcase. Wanna pick some books to come with us?” she asks.
I nod, but look over at the bedroom door. It’s closed. There’s no way I’m going in there. Being in there with Emjay is like being trapped in a cage with a hungry grizzly bear. And Mom senses my hesitation.
“Tell you what. How about you go outside and play, and I’ll pack everything up for you?” she suggests.
“Okay,” I say, and walk out of the apartment. Not knowing that would be the very last time I did.
Goodbye, Apartment Number Four.
When I wake up, we’re moving. Emjay is in the passenger seat, looking out the window—still not facing Mom. Ani is still on my lap, stirring awake.
I hate that dream. Because it’s not a dream. It’s a memory. Aren’t dreams supposed to be fun? Don’t dreams exist to let you briefly escape reality?
I want to dream of something cool like riding a triceratops or traveling in a rocket through space. I’ll even take the dreams that kids my age hate, like sitting in a boring classroom taking a test on geography. I’d even dream long enough to hand in my test and see the teacher’s eyes widen because my answers were so impressive. It would be my dream, so instead of naming all fifty states and their capitals, it would be a test about which California towns are safest to drive through. Or which towns in Northern California have the friendliest homeless shelters. Or maybe even which religious groups are the most accommodating for a family living in a car to spend a night or two in their holy parking lots? Easy peasy. Buddhists are the best. They’ll even offer you food sometimes. Unfortunately, they are few and far between. The worst would be Christian churches. They call the cops and get your car towed away. The bonus question on the test would be this: What three structures do all low-income neighborhoods have an abundance of? You would think the answer is a food bank or a police station, or maybe even a YMCA so people can take free showers whenever they need to, but nope. Those would be the wrong answers. The right answers are liquor stores, gun stores, and churches. Every poor city has those. And more often than not, all three are right next to each other, on every corner. Get drunk, get a gun, and find God. That’s how America keeps the poor people poor.
I’d welcome a school dream. At school there are kids my age. And even if it is just a dream, it would be fun to have friends again. Maybe Mom would let me sleep in and I’d dream long enough to go to a birthday party. That would be the best dream ever. It wouldn’t even have to be my birthday party. I just want to be there. Around people. Around presents. Around cake and balloons and a backyard where we all play games.
We pass a sign as we head south down the highway. I didn’t get a chance to read it, but Emjay did. “Let’s go to San Francisco. Live under that famous bridge,” he says jokingly.
“There’s only water under the bridge. And Opin can’t swim,” Mom says.
She’s right and wrong. I can swim, just not very well … yet. Every time we find a pool and go swimming, I always stay in the shallow end, near the stairs. I bet I would be swimming by now if Emjay tried to teach me, not drown me. He says he’s just messing around, but I’m not so sure. Last time we found a pool, he held me under for so long I was throwing up water when Mom finally rescued me. That got us kicked out of the apartment complex pool we’d snuck into. The manager didn’t recognize us and realized we didn’t live there. So we had to leave. We hardly ever drive around apartment complexes looking for pools now. People can be so territorial. Mom gets mad because she says, technically, all this land was ours. And water should be free. But that’s not how the world works, from where I’m sitting. Nothing is free.
“Frisco is too expensive. Sactown was too expensive. Opin, it’s your call … Oakland or Stockton?” Mom asks.
I never heard of either of them. “Umm,” I say.
“Choose quick. We’re on the Five. We either go west or stay heading south,” she adds.
I look down at Ani and wonder where would be best for her. For me, it really doesn’t matter where we go. Everywhere is the same. A parking lot is a parking lot. My mom will spend a few days taking odd jobs while looking for a real one. She’ll maybe make enough money to get us to the next city, but never enough to get first and last month’s rent and a security deposit and credit checks for a new place. Down payments are almost impossible for people like us. Credit checks are constant reminders that my family is not good enough. But they are all wrong. We are more than just numbers on a piece of paper. If one of these places took a few minutes to get to know us, they would see that we are good enough.
Oakland rhymes with broke-land. We already know that town. We are that town. Stockton … Maybe we can stock up on a ton of food and money. That sounds logical. Maybe it’s a sign. “Stockton,” I say.
“Stockton it is,” Mom declares. And we keep heading south on the highway, past the exit for Oakland. I hope I made the right choice.
“Let me see that mutt,” Emjay says to me.
I hesitate. I wouldn’t put it past him to take Ani and toss her out the window of this moving car. I know that’s a terrible thing to say about my brother, but Emjay is a loose cannon. Calm one minute and completely furious the next. I’ve been scared of him ever since we left Dad, which is as far back as I can remember. One time, during our eye exams, when I was six and he was eight, I was told I have 20/20 vision. A sniper’s sight, the doctor called it. But Emjay, his vision was not so good. And he didn’t take the news very well, especially being told he had to wear glasses. Right there, in the middle of the exam room, in front of Mom and the doctor, Emjay threw me to the ground, got on top of me, and began poking me in the eyes. Luckily, Mom pulled him off before I took any lasting damage.
To this day, Emjay refuses to wear his glasses. His vision must suck by now. But my brother believes not looking like a nerd has its advantages for people living the kind of life we live.
“No,” I say, and tuck Ani into my ribs.
Emjay turns around. “Opin, let me see it,” he repeats, and grins.
I know that grin. One time we found a loaded BB gun, and he pointed it at me and gave me that grin. Run, he said. And even when I begged him to leave me alone, he started his countdown. Three, two, one … I started running. And on my third or fourth step, he shot me in the back of my thigh. I remember the giant bruise it gave me. I remember the hole it made in my camouflage pants. Emjay never apologized for shooting me. And I never apologized for throwing the BB gun into a ditch. After that day, Mom told Emjay that if he ever touched another gun, she’d slam his fingers into a door so he could never pull a trigger again. And as far as I know, her threat worked.
“Mom,” I say, hoping she’ll keep Emjay at bay.
She reads the worry on my face. “You’ve seen a dog before, Em. Why don’t you decide where we should eat?” she asks.
Emjay usually doesn’t let me off the hook this easy, but this time, he does. He must be hungry. He faces forward and looks through the CDs we have in our green CD case. He pulls one out and inserts it into the dash.
One thing the three of us have in common is our love for music. Sometimes, being stuck in a car, music is all we got. My mom and Emjay have an agreement to never fight over music. She won’t ask where he got the CD, and he won’t play anything that is vulgar and full of cuss words. So far, their treaty is going strong. He’s just picked the LL Cool J CD, and the song “Mama Said Knock You Out” begins. Mom turns it up. And as soon as the beat kicks in, I relax. Mom is smiling. Emjay’s sinister grin is gone. We rap along as loud as we can as we head south on Interstate 5 toward the city of Stockton.