I Never Saw the Father
by Julian Santiago
Art by Emily Gillcrist
The white boy drew a line in the copper sand. I was on the other side. The goal of the game was to pull one another into crossing the line. The game sounded easy. I grabbed his forearms and I felt his blond hair arch over my fingers and his cold hands clasping my arms like icy claws. I leaned back and he leaned back and we pulled until the skin was red from the pulling. I clenched my teeth until my teeth hurt. I could feel his muscles taut. His face was wrinkled in the labor of the pulling and his teeth were clenched and his cheeks pulled back into a growl and a smile. The blood went up to his face and into his eyes. Sweat shone on his neck like oil in water, a green metallic sheen.
The pain in my arms was unbearable and I let him pull me over the line in the sand. But I didn't step over it. I let him tip my balance so that I fell into his arms. My forehead slid on his chin. I felt the cool oil of his sweat on my brow, and I remained on his arms for a second, the toes of my feet still behind the line in the red sand. I felt his arms damp and slick against my own.
I looked up at him and he was smiling. His teeth white against the red sand and golden sky. The fields of wheat over his crown curling against the bloody clouds.
I win, he said.
And I smiled but my smile trembled.
I win, he said. You owe me.
I looked at him in pain.
He pushed me into balance. Reluctantly, I dug from my pocket a silver coin. I extended my arm out to him with the silver disc flat on my brown palm. Its weight saddened me.
Yes, he said.
The tips of his fingers tickled my palm as they picked the coin.
I'll play you for the other one, he said.
I shook my head.
C'mon, I'll play you for the other one, he said.
I shook my head harder.
He grabbed my arms where they were red and held me behind the line.
Here. I'll play you, he said.
He wanted the gold coin because he saw me playing with it. But I didn't pull.
C'mon, he said. And he pulled my limp arms.
He hid his teeth behind his lips.
Alright, he said.
The wind was dry and there was sand in our hair.
My father came out of the pharmacy. He grunted at me.
Vámonos, ándale, he said.
The boy let me go. My father climbed onto the driver’s seat of the truck and I climbed onto the co-pilot’s seat. The rusted thing rattled.
I looked at his blue eyes and his pink smile.
I'll play you for the other one, he said as we moved.
And I said nothing.
My father drove down the highway and cheerily said medicine was expensive in these parts.
There was so much desert and sunset. And I was in that state of dream or sleep from the heat or squeaky rattle. I saw the desert grass like the golden hair on the boy’s arms. There was a cloud of dust and sand behind us. I felt the hair on my arms which was black and thin and I looked at my eyes and at my smile in the mirror and I did not see the same blue and the same white.
What were you playing, my father said suddenly. One thick wrist was on the wheel.
And I said, a game of pulling.
What are the rules? he said.
I don't know, I said.
He frowned at me. Did you win?
I don't know.
Why don't you know, he said. And he glared at me.
I didn't know what he wanted, I said.
Why were you playing? he said.
We weren't playing, I said.
You were playing a game, he said. That's what you said.
I didn’t say we were playing.
A velvet purple softly spread over the rim of the sand. The dim orange and red of the sunset unfurled petals up into the cloud speckled sky. The clouds, once red embers, now falling to ash.
It wasn't a game, I said.
Then what was it? he said.
He wanted my coin, I said.
My father said nothing. I looked at his onyx eyes pressed into his sockets hard like dolls' eyes. His irises were round and beady but they were also long and feline. They were perfect eyes. Eyes like black pearls in peapods. Wrinkles like roots had grown at their sides.
Did you give him the coin? he said.
Which one? I said.
Did you give him the gold coin? he said.
No, I said. I gave him the silver coin.
My father's jaw tightened.
Why did you give the gringo your grandmother's coin? he said. The word gringo was hard and angry.
She's gone, I said.
My father sped faster into the desert twilight.
Did you give him the gold one? he said.
No, I said. Not the gold one.
Pendejo, he said. It was worth less.
Then there was a long silence.
You know that silver one was your grandmother's, he said.
Yes, I know, I said.
She didn't give it to you for nothing, he said.
Did you want it, I said bravely.
I did, he said. But I was happy she gave it to you.
I was happy too, I said.
She loved you like she loved none of us, he said.
And I felt a creeping regret enter into my heart. As when the world goes gray and starved and blue in shame.
Don't play with that boy anymore, he said.
I never want to play with him, I said.
Then why do you pull with him? he said.
Because he tells me to, I said.
And why? he said. Why do you let him?
I stayed silent.
He huffed.
The sun kept sinking into the sand. Near the rim of the visible horizon was the border control station, empty as always on the way out. On the other side, the long trail of white and yellow lights of cars entering the country shattered the dark.
No sé, Pa, I said.
I was angry at him and at the boy and at myself.
What would my mother say, he said to himself half-whispered.
I remembered her old wooly scowl. Her wrinkles like cuts. Skin baked, earthed. Yellow teeth with the white fakes. Bad breath of coffee and the ground chapul she ate with hot pepper. A witch, she seemed to me at times, but a good one.
Again that wave of shame.
I imagined her coin in the hands of the boy, in his pocket, rolling and mixing with American money. I felt loneliness for the coin and for my grandmother, the loneliness and dread of leaving someone in an alien void, unprotected and vulnerable—a feeling I got when my teacher talked of the solitude of neutron stars, when all of a sudden Earth and all that went on inside her seemed like a stray spark in the bursting firefroth of a galactic spin—and I'd imagine the sad globe dancing its elliptic waltz around the sun nearly swallowed in utter darkness, a marble adrift in a black sea of nothing.
I slid my hand into my pockets and held the gold coin in my fingers. At least all of her wasn't gone.
You know where that coin came from, he said. You know.
Yeah, I know, I said.
He was approaching the station.
From the war, I said.
Loot, he said. Loot from the Spanish. Your great-grandfather made it from Pancho Villa’s bullets y la crúz de un español.
I'm sorry.
That does nothing.
The officer was next to my father.
Papeles, the officer said.
De regreso, my father said and handed them.
The officer stamped the passport. His metal desk trembled. He tilted his neck towards me, eyed me, then smiled and said, Hola guey.
I raised my arm and smiled weakly.
The bar rose and we drove under the Mexican sky.
On the other side, thousands of lights eager to cross.
Emily Gillcrist, Gust, acrylic and sand on canvas
I had dreams of the boy and the golden curls. In one, he bit my thigh until my blood seeped between his teeth. But I felt no pain. I felt instead a hard tingling, as of a muscle contracting to capacity, and a relief, like the scratching of a viral itch. In another, I walked into a lake at the bottom of which algae waved like his hair in soft undulations of wheaty light. I treaded through the shallow lake and I would try to run but my feet were leaden and seemed trapped in the tangle of the golden fronds. The water was as clear as the sky so that the lake, when I drew my gaze across its breadth, was a pool blinking with sunlight. All I could do was extend my arms out into the distance as if I was chasing. But my feet waded slow under the surface though my heart beat so fast I woke with my blood and sweat cold and crawling in my neck and wrists and my heart pumping its life like... like that of a bird. And all of this was unclear and distant to me, uncanny, yet filled with vague certainty. I didn't know I was afraid but the fear took hold like a tick and sucked me clean of good thoughts and easy nights. For I was always afraid to dream, to go back again to images of primordial homes and wombs—
And I woke sweaty and exhausted. The sweet, dry smell of burning timber, charred skin, and cilantro announced the day, the working mother, the flesh, and the rooster parading after its hens, tall and proud and silly.
My father's voice galloped in his quick Spanish but I couldn't hear. The blankets stuck to me. The wetness cool. Light lancing the sandy air fell on my brow and singed me until I left the bed.
We ate and my father said to hurry.
Vamos a vender, he said.
All the medicine? I said.
Toda, he said.
Do they want it, I said.
A lot, he said. They always want it.
It doesn't work, I said.
Claro que sí, he said.
Doesn't work for me, I said.
It's not for you, he said. Why are you taking the medicine?
I had a headache, I said. You said it's for vitality.
Not that kind, he said.
Well, it doesn't work.
Not for you, cabrón.
Óyeme, let him be, my mother said. Let him be.
And he was quiet.
We finished and I was again in the seat next to him and his thick wrist was resting on the thin wheel.
That isn't for kids, my father said.
But—
That isn't for kids, he repeated.
I was curious, I said.
I know you were, he said.
I saw you make it, I said.
And you wanted to try it, he said.
I liked it when he agreed with me. It felt like we were closer. When we eat and he tells me what's good or bad and I say yes. It feels like we're closer.
Well, it's not for kids, he said.
It looks for kids, I said. Like the paleta with the worm.
My father said nothing and drove.
On he went under the blue and white noon sky. Unbearable heat and sun parched the air. The metal edges around the window on the door burned.
I looked ahead at the pavement and the fading lines, and in the distance, like geometry dawning from the heat rose the border station in white and teal metal.
We lined behind a station wagon with luggage on its roof and bursting with heads and faces—an entire happy family crammed in there and happy to be so. There were children bouncing the car left and right in some play and I saw what I think was a woman turn her head back to say things and I only knew this because I could see the white of her teeth titillating in the shadows and the glare. I never saw the father.
But on we went little by little until it was our turn and the man with a face like an ajolote, ajolote arms, and ajolote complexion said, Papers? Papeles? with eyes green or gray—a dirty, foggy mixture, like mist in a dying forest—and he looked straight at my father, then arched to his side, so his head slid over his body like a smaller ball rolling over a larger one, and stared at me and all I saw were the beads of sweat rolling down his face.
When do you go back? he said in Spanish but his r was less the patter of raindrops on a stone than the rushing river. The r that curls the tongue back.
Regreso a las siete, my father said.
The office hummed, flipped through the visa, and stamped the passports.
A las siete, he said.
At seven, my father said.
Go, he said.
And we went on for an hour tense.
My father liked to scare me so he'd tell me stories of the men who hunted Mexicans in these parts. He'd say if I didn't behave he'd leave me behind that rock there so they'd find me.
Your skin would stand out in the yellow sand, he said. They'd find you easy.
I'd hide, I said.
They'd find you, he said.
The arid horizon of cactus sentinels and horned lizards made these words sound like evil omens and entirely possible.
Before we entered the South Texas town of Aquavilla, where my father would peddle his medicine, little bungalows and renovated saloons emerged here and there. A tall building with no windows was painted baby blue. My father said once it was the boys' brothel. In my mind, it stood like an obelisk in the middle of stone ruins. I'd often see young men leaning against the wall in the sun's glare, and the sweat would make their foreheads and their necks shine. Their faces were always turned against the light as if they were waiting for something.
Don't ever take the medicine again, he said.
There was a pause.
Why is there a snake in it? I said.
That's how it's done, he said.
We were entering the town and the fading boards and signs announced the population and the cheapest attorneys of Aquavilla, and one even had a casino with a woman in an iridescent Carnival dress whose breasts were almost bursting. They even painted a star-glimmer on her left bicuspid.
But what does it do? I said.
He parked the rattling machine in front of a large house. The road up to it was orange. My father rang and an old, short man in a tweed coat emerged with a smile.
Gracias gracias, señor, he said. I’ve been waiting a long time. Gracias! Uhh... how do you...?
Seesty, my father said.
Sixty? the old man said. Expensive, uhh... no?
He looked at me.
My father shrugged as if he weren't a part of the negotiation.
The old man's glee evaporated.
Bueno, my father said. Enjoy!
And we left.
Down we drove to another house which stood ridiculous between two hills, as if the two mounds on either side were slowly absorbing the house into themselves.
A woman emerged and she gasped in relief, paid my father with no further questions and he handed her one of the jars from the truck.
Thankyouthankyouthankyou, she said and slammed her door, which looked like a bar of white chocolate.
My father never told me what the medicine was for. I'd ask my mother but she too would keep on cooking and grinding the corn, answering my questions with her rustic sighs.
The liquid was greenish and the dead snake yellow-white. It stared at us with a fogged, dead, blind eye and a smiling canine mouth. My father kept the jars in an alcove, not quite hidden but out of sight. The light of the sun which fell from a small window pierced through the green liquid and the refracted light arched through the shadows and sparked green that dark section of the kitchen.
Before we left back across the border, we stopped at the drug store where an old man, brown because of the sun and sand and with sharp blue eyes, would suck some of the green liquid from the jars with a fat glass syringe which he'd then squeeze into small vials and lay them in iron shelves behind him. Then he'd give my father money and he'd smile under his broomy mustache.
And it was during these transactions that the boy and a man arrived at the bar across the street and the man left the boy outside the bar on a bench. I was crouching down writing the words Quetzalcoatl and Cortés in fingerthick letters until my nails were red and dry and uncomfortable when he noticed me. I thought he was a prince like in the English books or in the movies. I even wondered if he was really a boy.
He stretched out a fist.
I stared at it mute.
He shook it.
I grabbed it.
He took my hand with his other hand and turned the palm up. He deposited the silver coin.
I'll play you for the other one, he said.
I shook my head and wanted to go inside to my father, but I heard the icy clink of glass and the rustle of coins.
Hey, he said. What's ya name?
I looked down at the sand.
You don't talk? Hey! What's ya name? C'mon!
He poked my clavicle hard so I jerked back.
How come you don' say nothin'? I know you hear!
And I'd hear and say nothing.
He grabbed my arms like the day before.
Let's play again! he said.
I said nothing. I feared my father coming from the pharmacy.
He drew the line with his shoe. He gripped my arms again, but today his grip was tighter. His eyes and my eyes met and he smiled.
Ready? Pull!
I gripped his forearms which were thin like mine and I arched my body back to pull away, and my skin felt the tightness of the pull until my arms were red to bleeding from the pulling and we both were sweating like oxen hauling a mountain. And the sun orbed over us slowly again towards the horizon. The pallor of the sunset was flung on the walls and the clouds and the wooden beams from which the telephone cables hung and hummed and on the windows which lit themselves in a reddish golden light, so that the dust of the town and the sand took on a coral shimmer. And in front of me, as I pulled and he pulled, he too turned red while my blood trafficked in my ears.
The pain beat me. I let his arms go and he pulled me to his side again and I fell on him and his sweat again. In that second, I smelled him and I felt myself captured in the heaving tide of his breath. I was afraid and maybe because of the sleepiness of that hot hour, I could not fight off a terrible sense of loneliness, of abandon, as when you discover a truth which transforms your place in the world, how you see it, how you are in it; an apocalyptic truth which leaves you naked in a sea of eyes where every lick of the wind, every passing glance, every brief brush of an elbow, and tap of meeting stray fingers becomes an unfamiliar cut from a blade.
My father emerged from the store carrying half-empty jars and found my nose cloven in the boy's neck. He kicked me away against the truck and roared at me to get in and tossed the jars into the back where some cracked and spilled. He got in fast and the boy was smiling and even laughing yes but sweetly the way a boy giggles when tickled or did I imagine that because he was really crying... it's so long ago and it seems like such an important memory…
But my father drove fast south to the border. The sun entered hard through my window so he didn't stare or look at me but his words came in like icy hail and I drunk off of sweat and golden curls barely heard words seeping through clenched yellow teeth which said he would give me the damn drink he would give it to me and I'd say nothing. Maybe that'll harden me—yes maybe that'll stiffen me up.
Te va a hacer un hombre. And he laughed nervously.
Yes sir, he said. Eso te va a hacer un hombre. Because a man you'll be. A man you must be.
Emily Gillcrist, Castle in the Sand, acrylic and sand on canvas
