We Were Here (39 page)

He charges again, dives toward the sofa at me but I sidestep him, hop over the cushions and land on the other side on my back with a thud. We both get up and look at each other.

Him on one side of the couch, me on the other.

Still just playing.

Still just having fun like every other day.

And I’ll never forget the look on his face. Not for the rest of my life. It’s the look I’ve dreamed about every night since, and will dream about every tomorrow after. My big bro, laughing, happy, his hair cut short and mad cool, sideburns long and thin and perfectly trimmed, his face the face all the
girls at our school die over, his clothes the clothes all the dudes at our school try to copy on the DL.

My big bro.

Diego.

Him staring at me, breathing a little hard from us messing around. Alive. About to chase after me one last time.

Every dream I think back to this moment I try to make it so I just give myself up, let him tackle me, tell him mercy, tell him he’s right how one day ain’t today.

But I don’t give myself up.

’Cause at the time I feel so strong. I’d just pried him off me with my bare hands. And anyways we’re just messing around like any other day.

He races around the couch and I dart in the kitchen, scoop the steak knife off the table he’s just used to butter his bread.

I turn around and try and tell him: “Back off, yo!” But I can’t quite get the whole thing out ’cause I trip going backwards and fall on my back against the sink, my head smacking on the door of the cupboard.

Diego flips the kitchen table the rest of the way over laughing and dives on me. Tackles me. Like any other day. But this time he doesn’t get me in a headlock. And this time he doesn’t tell me to say mercy. And this time he just has his eyes on mine and a smile that’s fading off his face, draining like water from a bathtub, like sand through your fingers at the beach. This time his eyes get mad big and wide and scared and then they drift to the side, emptying out.

This time our messing around isn’t just messing around because I trip and fall with the knife and my head bangs the cupboard door and when he goes to tackle me there’s the knife and he falls on it and it goes in him.

The knife.

It goes in him.

I feel this happen.

I look in his face and know something forever has happened and try and push him off but he’s stuck on me and I have to shove him with all my new strength and finally he rolls over onto his back and I stare at him, breathing hard.

The knife is sticking out of his chest. Out of his heart, the Indian doctor will later tell my moms in the waiting room of the hospital, and after she hears those words she will go down on her knees holding on to the doctor’s arm and screaming and everybody looking at her.

At first my head is a blur ’cause I can’t catch my breath, but then it gets clear. The knife I was holding. It pierced Diego’s heart and killed him dead. I stabbed my big brother in the heart.

My Diego.

My family.

My entire life.

I scream like a little girl. His blood pouring out of him like a water fountain and onto the kitchen tile and I’m scooping it up and trying to push it back in him but I can’t, and I’m looking down at my shirt at all his blood on me, too, and on my arms and my face and my pants, in my hands.

I lean over him and scream and scream and scream.

And then my face goes normal for a sec and it seems like I’m thinking but I’m just trying to realize this is real and my brother has a knife in him and then I scream and pick up his face in my hands and look in his eyes big and empty and drained.

I lay his head back down soft even though he’s dead.

I stand up, make Diego’s head go straight and stare at the
knife in his chest and scream again, but this time no sound comes out, like I’m mute, but then when I scream a second time there’s sound again.

I run in the living room and look at the couch and the TV and the bread on the rug. I grab the remote and think how to put it back together. Grab the battery from under the couch, push it back in, snap on the cover. I set the remote on the table by the couch and run back in the kitchen and kneel next to my brother who still has a knife in his heart and spit bubbling from his mouth and eyes that are drained.

I grab his face again and yell at him I don’t even know what words but he doesn’t hear me.

I yell and yell and yell not even real words and then start telling him his name: “Diego! Diego! Diego!”

Right in his ear.

But he doesn’t hear me.

And then the sirens are outside.

And then the cops and firemen are coming in the kitchen and saying things I can’t understand and spreading out and kneeling by Diego.

And then I’m with one of them in the living room next to the overturned bread and he’s holding up my chin so I’ll look him in the eye and tell him my name and say what happened but I can’t understand him.

He’s saying his questions over and over and over.

And I’m crying.

And then I’m in the front of the squad car. I’m looking in the back. It’s empty. I’m looking at the cop who’s shaking his head, talking in his radio. And I’m wishing he would put me in the back, ’cause I know it’s where I’m supposed to be, not the front, in the back, how it always is on TV and in movies and on the show I used to watch after school.

And then I’m at the police station and my moms is rushing
in and I’m standing up and shouting her name, Mom! And we’re making eye contact, and then she’s looking away. And her face is scrunching up and she’s looking at the cop and then turning away from him too and leaving me at the station, in the cell, and one of the cops is running after her, yelling for her to hold on, Mrs. Casteñeda!

Mrs. Casteñeda!

Mrs. Casteñeda!

And then I’m in front of the judge, who’s telling me my sentence.

And then I’m in here.

In this horse shed in Fresno, where my whole body is sore and trembling and everything smells like hay and my chest is going in and out and in and out faster than is even possible.

And I’m crying tears and telling Rondell about killing my own brother.

And he’s staring back at me with his mouth open.

September 11—more

I let my face fall in my hands. Just like my grandma. Only I pretended my hands made up a dark cave like the one me, Mong and Rondell went in by the beach.

I started calming down by taking deep breaths and concentrating on the smell of dirt on my palms.

Rondell came over and put his hand on my shoulder and said: “It’s okay, Mexico.”

“It ain’t,” I mumbled at him. “I can never change it back.”

“Nah, it’s okay, Mexico,” he said, nodding at me. “’Cause it ain’t really your fault.”

I lowered my hands and looked at him. “What are you talkin’ about, Rondell? I did it.”

“Nuh-uh, Mexico.”

I stared back at him without blinking. Somehow I already knew what he was gonna say, but I wanted to wait until it came out of his mouth.

“It’s the devil,” Rondell said, nodding his head and squeezing my shoulder. “The devil done came up in your head like he does mine sometimes. He
made
you do it.”

I stared at him for a few long seconds, the anger rising in me like a boiling thermometer. I told him: “What’d you just say?”

He nodded some more, like it was simple. “The devil, Mexico. He came up in your head, like he do with me sometimes. He who made you kill your brother.”

No thoughts, and I was reaching out and cracking Rondell in his face with a closed fist and his head was snapping back and blood was trickling out his nose.

He looked at me without really reacting.

“It was me, you fucking retard!” I yelled. “I did it!”

I kept waiting for him to grab me, hit me back, throw me out my chair, stomp my neck, but he just sat there looking at me, still nodding.

“It’s the devil,” he said. “He twist people’s thoughts like that.”

I stood up and punched Rondell again. This time right on the side of the head. I shouted: “Shut up about the devil, Rondell! It was
me!
I killed my brother!”

He touched his face where I smacked him but he still didn’t do anything back. “It’s okay, Mexico,” he said. “The devil came in your head like he doin’ right now. It ain’t even you tryin’ to hit me. It’s the devil, Mexico.”

I lost it. Marched around the table and started swinging on Rondell. He covered his face to mute the blows but didn’t
fight back. And that shit made me even more crazy and angry and I punched and punched and kicked and spit and yelled in his ear how it was me and not no devil, I killed my brother, how he’d even know there was such a thing as a devil or God or heaven or hell, maybe it was just people like me and him and Mong and if we did something it was us and nobody else. I yelled at him and threw haymakers from every direction and blood started coming out his mouth, too, and his ear got all red.

For the longest he just took it, telling me about the devil, and saying I was okay, and he’ll watch over me, until finally he got tired of getting hit and stood up and wrapped me in a bear hug and threw me to the ground.

“Stop it, Mexico!” he yelled, wiping blood from his nose and mouth on his sweatshirt.

I yelled: “Fuck you, Rondell!”

And finally he stepped his broken-ass shoe down on my face, slid it down to my neck, just like he did the first day I met him in Juvi, and started pressing down hard, still telling me it was okay. My face was mashed down so hard my teeth were partly in the dirt and I could taste it and feel my lip about to split and I couldn’t hardly breathe, and I tried to tell him: “Do it, Rondell! You fuckin’ illiterate! Push down all the way! Do it!”

He pressed down harder and started talking in tongues or something and then he told me about God and the devil and cleansing both our souls so it would never happen again and then suddenly he went quiet.

“Do it, Rondell!” I shouted, ’cause all I wanted was to be punished or to disappear or go to sleep forever, get erased, go in space, where I could tell Diego I’m still his brother and he’s still stronger than me and mercy!

But Rondell lifted his foot off my face.

I looked up, still crying, watched Rondell walk off and lay on his part of hay on his back by his bag and look up at the roof.

“What’re you doin’?” I said. “I want you to push your foot all the way to the ground. Don’t you understand I deserve it?”

But he just shook his head and wiped the trickle of blood coming from his nose and mouth. “You don’t deserve to get hurt, Mexico.”

He touched his red ear and said: “You my only friend I ever had.”

Then I woke up.

And tears were running down my face and I stared at poor Rondell lying there. Who was trying to help me. I let myself cry and cry and cry, for what I’d just done to Rondell.

I wiped my face on my sweatshirt and told Rondell in this weak-ass voice, “I’m so sorry, man.”

I said it a few more times, in a quiet voice, one that I don’t even know if he could hear, ’cause he just stayed there on his section of hay, staring at the roof, wiping blood from his face every couple seconds. And I thought how I was saying sorry to him, but I was also saying sorry to Diego and to my moms and to my grandma and grandpa. And even to me. I was saying it to everybody all at the same time.

After a while Rondell told me to go in my bed, but I just stayed where I was. In the dirt. I couldn’t even move.

And I slept there the entire night.

September 12

When we woke up today and went to work, me and Rondell acted like nothing ever happened with us. We just got up and
ate the fruit the little girl brought us and grabbed our tools and climbed in the back of the truck and sat there with the wind blowing on our faces going to work.

I looked at the dried blood on Rondell’s face and I felt so bad my stomach hurt, but I didn’t say anything.

When we were walking to the tree I tried to tell Rondell I was sorry again, but he just got this big goofy smile on his face and said: “It’s okay, Mexico.”

I patted him on the shoulder, and he did the same to me, and it seemed like we were cool, but I knew I still had to make it up to him somehow.

We tossed all our tools down by the tree and got set to start working, and you wouldn’t believe what happened.

I just barely put my pick under the tree and the thing fell over on its side. Me and Rondell looked at each other, and we both started laughing.

Some of the Mexican guys saw and started whistling and clapping and everybody set down their tools and came walking up to us and patted us on the back. And these two big dudes moved the tree away from the hole we’d dug. They shouted stuff to each other and us in Spanish. And then my gramps and his friend came over and put their hands on the tree and laughed to each other and my gramps’s friend said: “Told you about these roots. Look at ’em.” He pointed at how long and thick and deep they were, and me and Rondell nodded and laughed with everybody else.

And eventually a guy in a small tractor came driving up the hill to drag away the tree and they put me and Rondell on another job in the backyard.

When we got home, after we got paid again and ate eggs and tortillas, I counted up our money and we had more than enough to pay back the Lighthouse. I looked up at Rondell
and said: “Just so you know, man. Tomorrow I’m going back to do my time. I already told my grandma and grandpa.”

I thought he’d be surprised, but he wasn’t. He just nodded, said: “Okay, Mexico.”

“What about you?” I said.

“I’m gonna go back to Oakland and find my auntie. Or else my cousins. Maybe one of ’em got a room I could be in.”

I looked at him, nodding, said: “You can have all the leftover money, man. I think there’s like a hundred something.”

“Thanks, Mexico,” he said.

And then I don’t even know what came over me but I hugged his big ass. It was a real quick one, barely lasted a second, but he knew it was a hug too. Because when we got on our separate piles of hay for the night he had this huge smile on his face, and he said: “You like me again, Mexico.”