Short Story

“Solace” Excerpt

Published in The Pulse Literary Magazine of Lamar University 2018-2019

“Hey, Amigo!” my father said to Miguel. “Speak English! You’re in America!”

“Bye,” Miguel whispered to me.

Miguel turned from my father and walked back toward the sidewalk. We didn’t expect him to be home; he never was. We had just gotten out of school, and usually at that time of the day, he was at a bar or with some whore. We tended to avoid my father as much as possible. I knew he didn’t like Miguel, but Miguel and I had been friends since kindergarten. Our friendship had endured all of my father’s shit from kindergarten until middle school, and he was still somehow my friend. I sometimes thought it was out of pity.

My mom had liked his family. She always talked to Miguel’s mom, behind my father’s back as well since she too didn’t want to set him off. I didn’t see the problem in hanging out with him. My mom had understood my father’s dislike but never explained it to me. She just said that he didn’t know them and was cautious.

“Why do you have to do that?” I asked my father as Miguel took off.

He laughed, took a deep drag of his cigarette, and continued to harass anyone that walked by our house. Our neighborhood had been ‘tainted,’ as he liked to called it, by immigrants over the past several years. We lived here our whole lives. Well, he had with Mom. She died in a car crash about a year ago. My father got worse after her death. It should have been him instead of her. He was the drunk. The asshole. And the one responsible for her death. As far as I knew, they were both dead.

“Ain’t I told you not to hang out with them Wetbacks?” he said to me.

“He’s not! Stop calling him that!” I said. “That’s why no one likes hanging out with me. Because you’re such a . . .”

“Such a what?” he asked as he stepped in my way.

I stopped on the second step of our mold-covered porch. I knew I fucked up but didn’t care. I was right. He was being an ass, and that wasn’t right. I stared past him, knowing I could out-maneuver him to the front door. His wounded leg, hurt in the Vietnam War, would prevent him from catching me. And I knew I was in for it unless I somehow got past him and locked myself in my room.

“You gonna tell me?” he asked.

“No,” I said, pushing past him and reaching the screen door.

I opened it and said, “such a puto.”

I thought he wouldn’t understand me. He never did. Never cared for learning or speaking “their” language unless it was to insult them. But I was wrong. Somehow, he found his army strength and pulled my ass back outside before I got a chance to run inside. Yanking me by my shirt, he dragged me down the steps and flung me on the dried patch of front lawn. For everyone to witness, he undid his belt right then and there, and I knew better than to run; it would only make it worse.

“You ain’t a Wetback,” he told me. “You gonna speak right!”