We Were Here (12 page)

I stared at the seals for a sec, trying to decide what I
thought about that. ’cause I was actually
happy
Mong was sick. I swear to God. And what does that say about me?

Here’s the thing: Maybe it’s a waste of damn time to fight what’s in your file. Maybe you’re destined to end up being that person no matter what.

For some reason I pictured Mei-li coming out from the bathroom right then, seeing our empty table at the pizza place. Her face all surprised and sad. Maybe it was best that she wasn’t sitting with me in the car, her hand on my leg, my girl. She probably wouldn’t like who I was anyway once she got to know who I am now.

“You stopping it?” Rondell shouted at me.

I turned to look at him but didn’t answer.

“Are
you, Mexico?”

“Whatever makes you happy,” I said.

He looked at Mong. “Are
you
?”

Mong smiled big. He put his right hand in his own puke and wiped it all over his face and then spit in my direction and laughed.

“Jesus,” Rondell said, jumping away from Mong.

I crinkled my face up and told the guy: “Yo, man, you’re disgusting.”

Mong stood up, still laughing, and leaned against the fence to watch the seals. He wiped his face on his sweatshirt, spit in the water.

Rondell looked to me, but I just did the same thing as Mong, stood against the fence, a ways down from him so I didn’t have to smell his puke. Rondell looked back and forth between us for a minute or so, and then he went up to the fence too. And we all just stood there, staring at the water, nobody talking.

While we stood there, I watched all the different people
who came to watch the seals. Sometimes a whole family would step up to the wooden fence overlooking the water. They’d point at the seals and laugh or say how cute they were. The dad would put on a voice and pretend it was the seals saying stuff. Or the mom would position her kid in the perfect spot and snap a digital picture with seals in the background, and then they’d all hover around the little camera screen joking about the kid’s eyes being closed. Or some old homeless-looking dude would just stand there solo like us, watching. All by himself. Dirty-ass flannel and beard blowing around in the wind. But after a while they’d all get tired of watching seals and move on. All except me, Mong and Rondell. We stayed there for like two hours. Not saying shit. Just standing next to each other, thinking our own thoughts. About how we got here and what we were gonna do now. I kept thinking how Jaden was supposed to take us to San Francisco in a few days anyway. We could’ve just waited for a ride. Or how back in the day my pop promised to bring me and Diego here for our first time. Just as soon as he got back from the war. But he never got back from the war, so we never came.

Well, here I am, Pop, I told him in my head. I finally made it to damn San Francisco. All on my own, too.

Ain’t you proud?

Mong wiped his face on his sweatshirt again and stepped away from the fence. He seemed totally back to normal. Super calm. Like nothing even happened between us. In a mellow-ass voice he told us how we should go south toward the border. Along the coast as much as we could because then we could sleep on the beach where nobody would bother us.

Me and Rondell straightened up too.

Mong started walking back the other way, down the pier, and me and Rondell just sort of followed him. For now, at least. I told myself I’d go along with the guy until I came up
with a better plan, and then I’d jet out on my own, roll solo. But for now he at least knew the city better than me.

As we walked Rondell tapped Mong on the shoulder and said: “Hey, Mong.”

“Yeah.”

“We still tryin’ to get to Mexico, right? To them fishin’ boats?”

“Yeah,” Mong said.

“Good.” Rondell turned his big Afro head my way and grinned, said: “’Cause this whole time we was sittin’ there, Mexico, next to them seals, I been thinkin’ ’bout that. How I really wanna be a fisherman now.”

“That right?” I said.

“Yup.”

“Well, you already
look
like a fisherman, Rondo. You got that part down.”

Rondell looked straight ahead and got this excited look on his face. “You really think so?”

“Yeah, man,” I said. “Most fishermen are big and black just like you. And they got nappy-haired Afros like yours. Almost all of ’em actually. All you’re missing is the damn pole and bait.”

Mong looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and it almost seemed like he was grinning at what I said. Which was so weird, man, considering we were just in another fight. I’d never met a person who could go from one extreme to the other in such a short amount of time. I bet Lester used to take him to some counselor who specialized in split personalities-schizophrenics or whatever—’cause Mong definitely had some advanced shit like that.

“I bet I catch the biggest ones you ever seen,” Rondell said as we kept walking. “That’s my word, Mexico.”

I looked at Rondell and I couldn’t help it, man, I sort of
cracked up a little. Inside. I don’t think I’d ever seen a dude his size look so happy. And just ’cause I told him he could probably be a fisherman.

We backtracked the other way, on Lombard this time, took it all the way to Fillmore and cut over toward the water. I had no idea where we were, but I read all the street signs like my old man taught me. It wouldn’t make sense, I knew, but it was a distraction and made me quit looking over my shoulder for cops every three seconds. We turned onto Marina and walked along this nice park where a bunch of white kids were playing soccer and Wiffle ball and the grown-ups were bunched together on blankets, talking and cutting off hunks of cheese to put on fancy pieces of bread. And this giant red bridge towered over everything in the background. It was that famous one in all the postcards and T-shirts about San Francisco. I’d never seen a bridge so big.

We stayed on the road all the way until it turned into Mason and then Mong had us cut through a part of the park called Crissy Field, where hippie-looking people were playing Frisbee and Hacky Sack with no shoes on. We walked out onto the sand and then Mong stopped cold and dropped his bag. He wiped his mouth with the arm of his sweatshirt and stared up at the bridge, which was right in front of us now, a huge mass of steel and cement and wires. It made you feel like an ant.

We stayed like that awhile, him looking at the bridge and me and Rondell looking between it and him, none of us really saying anything. Eventually Rondell sat down on this piece of driftwood and stared out at the water. I sat down too, ran my fingers through the sand. Mong squatted next to us. It was kind of disturbing, us just sitting there next to each other, like nothing ever happened between me and him just a while
ago. I still felt the sting of his punch on my right cheek, the ringing in my ear. But at the same time if he was really schizophrenic like I thought, it would make mad sense, right? I thought how there were actually
two
Mongs: Psycho Mong and Mellow Mong. Right now he was being Mellow Mong. And it was only the other one I actually had a problem with.

He pointed up at the bridge, said: “Know what that is?”

“A big-ass bridge,” I said.

Neither of them laughed, though.

“It’s the Golden Gate,” Mong said.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I heard of that bridge. It’s famous.”

“I heard of it, too,” Rondell said.

I patted him on the shoulder, said: “Sure you have, big guy.”

“Wha’chu mean?” Rondell said. All I did was laugh, so he looked back at the bridge and tilted his head a little, said: “Why’s it all red like that?”

I gave the guy a little round of applause. I don’t even know why, man. I guess when I get bored I like to mess with Rondell for some reason. “Yo, nice work, dawg,” I said, patting him on the shoulder again. “And here everybody’s been sayin’ you still ain’t got your colors down.”

He brushed my hand away, said: “I know what’s red and what ain’t, Mexico.”

Mong sat all the way down with us, wrapped his arms around his knees. “My dad said it’s made up of so much steel that by the time they finish painting all the way to the end they have to start right back at the beginning again.”

We all stared up at the giant bridge, Rondell pointing at it because who knows why, and then Mong said: “A lot of people commit suicide off it, too.”

“Yeah?” I said.

Mong nodded. “It’s so high the impact of hitting the
water mostly kills them. But if it doesn’t, they just drown anyway.”

“Tough way to go, man,” I said, glancing at Mong. Even Mellow Mong was morbid as hell.

“You think so?” he said.

“Hell yeah, man. Jumpin’ off a damn bridge?”

Mong turned to look at me. “How would
you
do it?”

I shrugged. “Maybe knock down a bunch of pills. Gas the car up while it’s still in the garage and take a snooze. Something that wasn’t all messy.”

“I wouldn’t do it at all,” Rondell said. “My auntie Reina told me people who kill theyselves can’t make it into the kingdom of heaven.”

“You ain’t exactly a shoo-in either way,” I said, tossing a stick toward the tide.

“Wha’chu mean?” Rondell said again.

If you haven’t noticed, that’s pretty much all Rondell ever says to anybody. Wha’chu mean, Mexico? Wha’chu mean, Mong? The shit’s actually mad annoying.

I shook my head, said: “Forget it, man.”

“I think dying in the water is perfect,” Mong said.

“I guess you ain’t never heard of no sharks.”

Mong just stayed staring at the bridge, this far-off look in his eyes. He probably didn’t even hear what I just said.

“Maybe I’d take pills too,” Rondell said. “I mean, if I really had to do it. So I could just go to sleep forever and ever.”

I turned and looked at Rondell for a minute. Sometimes when you catch the dude thinking he almost looks like an innocent little kid. Like he couldn’t hurt a fly. I’m serious. Once you get past how big and strong he is, I mean. And that I only know him from Juvi and the Lighthouse.

“Nah, Rondo,” I said, picking up another stick and tapping
it against my knee. “You’re better off just listenin’ to your auntie, man.”

Rondell looked at me, said: “Wha’chu mean, Mexico?”

I smiled and stayed looking at him, wondering if he could tell that for once in my group-home life I actually meant what I just said.

Us Looking for a Bus Station:

We cut through this old-school cemetery and back out onto a street that led us to the first part of Highway 1, where we stood at the side of the road and tried to hitchhike. But nobody picked us up so we kept walking. We followed along the side of the 1, through this grassy Presidio area and a fancy golf course and then down Fourteenth Ave. Then we ducked through Golden Gate Park, and when we got to the other side, we were on Nineteenth Ave.

It was hot as hell and we were all exhausted from being up so long, but still we just walked and walked and walked. And none of us complained any. Even though we hadn’t eaten anything and we were worried about getting to Mexico and how Mei-li said Mong was sick.

As we kept walking, wiping forehead sweat every five seconds and constantly looking over our shoulders, I thought about that, why none of us complained. Maybe it’s just ’cause we’re young and don’t know any better. Or ’cause we were thinking so much about how it’d be in Mexico. Or we were too stressed about getting picked up by some cop car that would eventually come creeping up over the hill behind us and flip on their lights. Or maybe us three are just tougher than how some people might be. But after a while I came up with this other theory.

Maybe the real reason we didn’t complain none is ’cause secretly, unconsciously or whatever, we thought we
deserved
to suffer. For real. We’d all done something bad to be put in a group home in the first place, right? And then last night we just walked out. Cut short our sentences, made plans to live somewhere else where we could start over fresh and have a better life of freedom and fine-ass tourist girls from all around the world. But shouldn’t we still have to pay for what we did? Shouldn’t we have to suffer somehow? Maybe us going on this never-ending walk like this, with no food or water or sleep, with the sun burning down on the backs of our necks, maybe that was the only way we could think of to make the world seem balanced again. Otherwise you could just do any damn thing you wanted in this life, and I don’t think that shit’s true.

Eventually we cut into the heart of some college campus ’cause Mong said there might be a bus station somewhere inside. All the college kids wandering around made me think of Jaden’s goofy ass. How he said those were the best days of his life and maybe I could go too ’cause I got good grades. They were roaming around with backpacks and flip-flops or sitting on little grassy hills eating lunch or laying out in the sun on towels with books in their hands or sleeping. It’s easy for a guy like Jaden to
say
you should go to college, because he fits right in. And that’s his job, to say other people could too. But walking around looking at everybody, I felt a million miles away from all them. From college. Like it was in a completely different galaxy from a kid like me.

When we finally found the station we stood in front of the counter and stared at all the possible places to go. This gray-haired lady with big thick glasses sitting in the booth turned on her mike and said: “Where you fellows headed?”

“South,” Mong said.

She smiled. “I’m gonna need you gentlemen to be a little more specific.”

“Something cheap that goes along the coast,” Mong said.

She looked down at a paper in front of her and then back up at us. “Got a bus like that just pulled into the station,” she said. “You guys hurry you can still make it.”

I stepped to the window with the leather petty-cash envelope, paid her for three tickets, and we hustled around the corner to where the buses were, trying to make it on ours before it left. We found bus 47 and stood at the bottom of the entrance with our tickets in hand. Before we climbed aboard with our bags I asked the skinny black driver: “How long till we leave?”