Texas Pages

(This excerpt from THE FLOWERS is Copyright 2008 by Dagoberto Gilb, and reprinted with the permission of Grove Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.)

Not that many years ago I would go to a house in the neighborhood,
not always someone’s I knew, one I’d never been inside
of, where I’d only have to maybe hop a fence, nothing complicated,
and from the backyard I’d crawl through an open window.
People always latch the ones in the front but never in the
back, and especially not the bathroom one, you know, and it
wasn’t so small I couldn’t get in quick. I could’ve stole lots of
[...] in those houses, except that’s not what I was going in there
for. I wasn’t like that. Maybe I don’t know exactly what I was
doing except I was doing it. I never took nothing, nothing much
if I did, because I didn’t want to. I was more watching how the
people lived, imagining how it would be in their house. I stared
at the framed pictures they had of their family. Husbands in suits
and wives with necklaces and old grandparents from the other
times way before. Unsmiling dudes, glaring at you, in tilted
military hats and coats with medals and ribbons. Full-body shots
of happy daughters in white veils and lacy crunchy wedding
dresses that poured all over into the bottom of the picture.
Shocked little babies on blue backgrounds squinting like What’s
going on here, what’s all this light [...]? Dopey-dumb I’m-soproud
high schoolers graduating and making a face like they
were department store managers. If I felt like it, if I had the mood,
I sprawled out on their couches or lay down on their beds. Go,
How would I be if I lived here? I’d let that come into me, I’d let
my mind go to the show it liked. Maybe you could say I would
go off to my own world. To me it wasn’t mine, nothing like
mine, because it would go to black. I loved that color. It was
like when the eyes aren’t open but try to see. What would finally
come were colors and lines busting through, flying out and
off and cutting in, crazy fires and sparks, and it’d come out speeding,
and I’d be like a doggie out the window, those lane dividers
whiffing by on the freeway straight below an open car window.
I’d start to see shapes floating and straightening and wiggling and
see it like it was a music that didn’t make sound but was making
a story. Not a regular story and I don’t mean one you would
hear some loco nut tell you, one that didn’t have nothing to do
with people or places you’ve ever seen. It’s that I can’t describe
it better. Just, I have to watch, I have to listen. It was always good
too. Say like when you hear music and it gets inside your brain
and goes and goes, sticking there. And so I guess it got in mine
like that. I listened and watched until I stopped getting too stupid
because, you know, I had to leave and get out of there fast.
And once I got up, shook it off and remembered where I really
was, even if I opened their refrigerator, when I looked inside,
wasn’t like I didn’t think of eating or drinking, I didn’t take
even a soda, thirsty as I might have been. I didn’t want them to
know I’d been there. Though I kind of opened the fridge door
because maybe I do think of—well, like orange juice. It’s that
I like orange juice. So maybe when there was some orange juice
I might have taken a gulp or two. But see, even then, nobody’d
really know. One time I was in this one house, and I was looking
inside a drawer in this girl’s bedroom. I knew about her
because she was this dude’s older sister, and she was in junior
college. It was that there were a bunch of bras, and I picked
them up and looked at them, touched them because I was holding
them. Wasn’t like I never seen my mom’s and my sister’s,
it wasn’t like I didn’t know the difference. And it was the only
time there was something like that, swear, and I did stop and
yeah I still got jumpy about it and felt like it was [...]ed up,
real bad of me and afterward I only snuck into one more house.
Like I said, I didn’t know what I was doing it for, and it wasn’t
like I liked doing it.

I heard this [...] because she was on the phone and I listened to
her. It was her sound, a white ripply line right into the black.
Not above. Black was everywhere and the white came from the
front, above, maybe below. I don’t know. I think it was Nely
she was talking to, probably. That was who she talked to. That’s
who I thought. My mom was going like What can he do? and So
what he screamed. Listen to me, she said. No, listen to me. No, listen,
listen. And I listened to what I could. I saw the white ribbon
curling and swirling. Men. She kind of laughed. He will never know,she said. Ay, ay, no! She laughed. She said, He is a man, and I
didn’t ask for that. She was laughing but not laughing happy and
I’m listening and I’m like going to that somewhere else inside
my head, all by myself.

I got worried I was getting sent to juvie when I did have to go
to the court because of nothing, for so much less. That was this
time when the police scraped the tires of their black-and-white
against the curb ahead of me. I was walking by myself. At first
I didn’t believe it was about me, but that policeman kept wanting
to know what I was doing. I was not wanting to say. Okay,
maybe, even really I was scared like anybody and I didn’t want
to show it but probably I did. How was I supposed to answer
because what’d I do? I was just walking, you know? Maybe a
couple days earlier I pocketed a chocolate bar and I folded a baby
comic book down my pants. It wasn’t like the first time I did that,
and when I did get caught this one and only time, when a drugstore
man yelled something, I ran, and I never made it back to
that store again and that was the worst of it and that already was
back then, and no way anyone could still care or remember. So
the passenger policeman who came up to me first, he goes, So
what’re you doing? and I’m like, Walking on the street, mister, which
is when the driver policeman comes around to stand next to his
partner, and he frowns at me too, like I’m stinky. Until a second
or so later, he gets this expression on his face. His eyes go a little
up to the sky, and his body gets kind of stiff, and he blows this fat
old pedo. And so, like anybody would, I laughed. I did because it
was funny, right? And so yeah I’m all guilty of laughing. But that’s
when they both get all blowed up mad—I’m disrespectful, and I
got attitude, and who did I think I am? They got so close into my
face I thought they were gonna kick the crap outta me. And so
that’s why I had to go to the juvie court, to hear a commercial
about disrespecting the police and authority and to hear about all
the potential trouble I was going to be in if I didn’t go right and
goodboy, straighten out and care about school and my education
and get good grades. My mom had to be there with me too. She
had to take off from work and listen and act like she was all worked
up about me too, which she wasn’t, I knew it, because I heard her
talking all the time on the phone about what she was up with, but
the lady judge wasn’t going to notice nothing. Once I told my
mom how the police dude threw a fart, she cracked up just like
me, because it was funny, right? But I knew not to say nothing to
a judge about what really happened. I’m not stupid. That judge,
she wouldn’t have laughed, and then I don’t think my mom
would’ve laughed no more, and she never laughed as much as me.
She was tired, and she didn’t like to waste time because she was
already way too busy.

It was that my mom, if she wasn’t at her job, was out on
dates and whatever. And sometimes she’d get in so late I
wouldn’t be awake. That was better for me than when she was
home, because when she was home, though I lived there and
slept there, it was better to be inside a neighbor’s house than
pissing her off. She could get all mad and complaining about
me and go how I messed up this and that and she could yell at
me how she couldn’t afford a maid to clean up after me, though
once in a while a lady named Marta, a sister of a friend, would
come to pick up the house and scrub the floors and wash windows
and dishes and vacuum even under the torn couch cushions.
That Marta thought I was all right because I made my own
dinner and lunch and did my [...] without nobody. She told me
whenever she came too. That didn’t mean much to me except
when I was getting yelled at and I knew it really wasn’t about none
of what the yelling was about. Probably my mom’s screaming at
me was that it used to be my sister, Ceci, she could yell at. Then
it got to be me. I didn’t ever believe it was because I was a man or
made bigger messes, like she said. My mom used to fight loud with
my sister. She would get so she’d go after Ceci with belts or wooden
hangers or whatever was near. One time it was a soda bottle. I
remember that time good. I was eating banana after banana during
the fight and my mom turned on me for one second too—
maybe why was I eating all the bananas the minute she bought
them—and my sister screamed right back so much it jumped back
over to them and they called each other out, like they would go at
it for real. Sometimes both of them would cry for a while during
and after, though mostly it was my sister, once she got old enough,
and meaner, until she finally stopped being at home much. Ceci
wasn’t talking to me very much then either. Then they were both
gone mostly. It was just, without my sister there, I was starting to
have the whole house, like it was mine. I never got hit or yelled at
like Ceci. My mom would be around for maybe an hour or two,
and she’d either change clothes and leave or be so tired she went
into her bedroom and went to sleep.

This one night I was watching the TV. I already ate a cheese
enchilada frozen dinner, which was crap, and the fried chicken,
which I loved but my mom said cost too much. My dog, who
I named Goofy because of her floppy black ears even though
she was a girl dog, was with me on the couch after she licked
the tin containers all clean, dragging them all around with her
tongue, then scratching and biting at her pulgas back near my
lap, when all the sudden she heard something and she was digging
her claws against my legs because she was on it before a
human ear could, running so fast she was barely able to make a
corner turn to the straight-ahead for the front door, barking all
excited like it was somebody she hadn’t seen all day. I didn’t
hear nothing, probably because I had that TV on and nobody
ever knocked on the door unless it was a Mormon or Jehovah
or one of those ex-tecatos who love Jesus like their heroin, and
I learned to stop opening the door for any of them. Usually I
wouldn’t even look if I did hear but because Goofy’s barking
so crazy I go, and before I even get near the door I could feel
the pounding on it through the floor and I heard some man
yelling at it loud and he’s beating on it, so hard that it’s shaking
and rattling. I ain’t going to answer but he keeps hitting on the
door so much I can’t help myself, the words pop out of me
that my mom’s not here. It was that he was screaming about
her. He was screaming like You [...], open the [...] door right
now, you [...] thief, you slut, you [...], open this door, Silvia,
right now, or I’ll [...] bust it in.

I was standing there not sure what to say or do next, Goofy
all barking and wagging like it was something fun.

“Open the door,” he says. “Open the [...] door.”

And without thinking first, now I’m talking too. I’m saying
no. I’m saying that my mom’s not home. I go reach over
and check that it’s still locked, and I hook the chain thing, backing
away from it as quickly as I got close.

“Open the door,” he says. He was beating on it so that the
door was wanting to give in. “Open it!” I felt like the whole
house was shaking.

Finally I can think for a second. It was hard because Goofy
was going all crazy. “She’s not home!” I shouted. I can think
finally, and what I’m thinking is that I know who it is. I’m thinking
it’s the man I heard her talking on the phone about. That
once he’d shot a man. That he got drunk a lot. This man’s voice
sounded drunk.

“You open the door,” he says, “or do you want me to bust
it in?”

I swear he was slugging the door with his fist, and there
was like a crackling wood sound.

“Do you hear me, kid? Do you [...] hear me?”
I’m whispering to Goofy to stop barking, Come on, Goof,
trying to make her calm, but she’s on automatic. It got like she
was barking at another dog and wanting to bite.

“Where is the [...]? You tell that [...] mother of yours
to open the door or I’m busting it in right now! You hear me?”

I ran to the kitchen. I had to open a bunch of drawers because
my mom never put things in the same ones or maybe I didn’t
because I didn’t know which drawer either. I found that big knife.
It was as long as my wrist, a wood handle. As soon as I grip it in
my hand, I don’t feel as scared. I didn’t care if he carried a gun.
He comes in, I cut the dude. Goofy was still wailing at the door
and he was still hitting on it and saying [...] but it seemed quieter
to me. I walked back a little slow, and I didn’t go near the door
but to one side of it. I held the big knife in my hand and I’m gripping
it so hard I didn’t feel like it was a knife but me.

The man started kicking the door. Then he was throwing
his body against it, and you could hear wood cracking. I’m just
standing there and I didn’t hear Goofy no more, if she was even
barking. When the door blasts, splintering the side it opened
on, it swung so hard and wild that Goofy didn’t move away
and she made a loud crying yelp, getting thrown against the
wall, crushed between it and the door. The man was standing
outside on the front porch and breathing fast. He rolled up the
sleeves of his white business shirt and tucked it into his black
slacks and there was some tattoo on his right forearm muscle
and he had on a slippery tie loose around an unbuttoned collar
and he was big. His face all purple. Real quick Goofy went back
to her barking again and the man couldn’t figure out which of
us to look at first until I see him see my knife. His eyes were
slits but I could feel heat and breathing out of them too and I
was standing there maybe ten feet away, one hand with the big
knife loaded in it, the other hand clenched and a little up, looking
ready to jab in a left-right combination.

“Watch yourself now, kid,” he says, stepping inside toward
me.

I stepped back, though not like I was backing off.

“You have to put that down right now,” he says to me.
“You just drop it, okay kid?”

I didn’t say nothing. I stepped back once more, keeping the
same distance between us. He stepped toward me again and I
backed up once more, thinking where a knife should go. . . .
Then he went at me. He was so fast he took me down even
before I saw him come and his hand locked my hand with the
knife in it to the floor. He pushed the air out of me because his
body on me was so heavy I couldn’t breathe. Goofy was growling
and biting him and I was trying to at least kick his [...] but I
didn’t do a thing to him and when I made him roll a little, it
made the knife dig into my own stomach.

He got me onto my back and pinned me, both my hands
pressed to the floor, his knees into my chest, hurting my ribs,
the knife not cutting me or him.

“Stop,” he says, too close to my face. “You gonna stop?”

Goofy was back to biting him and that was when he let go of
me, ripping the knife away from me as he stood up. Goofy kept
going for his leg until his hard black shoe lifted her jaw and head
when he kicked her there really hard, and she whimpered, hurt.
I got up once he got off me, and I was crying, and I saw how I
was bleeding at my stomach. It didn’t hurt or nothing yet. He
was standing there watching me for what might not have been
such a long time, and then he just turned around and took off
out the broken front door.

And so all the time it seemed like I was hearing her on the phone
when I didn’t want to. I probably wanted to know, but I didn’t
want to hear. Wondered who it was when I heard her going,
Whatever I have to do, or, No, I won’t, no. The phone was nothing
good. It was like waiting on a school bell, jumping at how
loud and always expecting. When I can’t not listen in on her, I
want to smash that quiet between. When it was her voice I was
following, when there was silence it meant that some [...] would
hit. So I tried to never listen. I made it go black inside my head,
and then words, when she’d make them, were these shapes that
wormed around, spraying light that would disappear into a hole
that was bigger than any room I been in.

It was like right then, even if it was really days or something, that
my mom introduced me to Cloyd Longpre. He was wearing a
fake blue suit and tie. I never saw him in one ever again. Also, his
hair was all pomade oil. That also would be the only time it was
so neat that you could see the comb lines. I was sitting on our couch
in the living room, and he sat in a chair—it was Goofy’s favorite
unless she was sitting with me on the couch watching the TV—
across from me, a kind of stupid but really happy stupid smile on
his face. He had a silver tooth on one side, showing at the edge
of his mouth. Between us was the floor where I’d been taken
down. I was still feeling mad about it, so there was that. Not the
cut. I didn’t care about that. It didn’t hurt no more. It didn’t really
hurt even when it was supposed to, right after. My mom was
sitting next to me. She was wearing a flower dress—I think roses,
though I call all flowers roses—a new one, and shiny red shoes
that matched. She was being too pretty like always. I loved my
mom, and sometimes it scared me because I thought maybe I
wasn’t supposed to say that even to myself. Maybe I wouldn’t
have thought about it except that I was always seeing how men
looked at her. When I did too, just to think about what it was
about, I knew what it was about. How pretty she was in the way
men are flipping through pages of dirty magazines. My mom
sometimes would go around in her bra and panties in the house.
You know, especially in her bedroom and bathroom and between.
Nothing [...] up, she just wasn’t embarrassed. So seeing
her, I really started knowing what it was about her. It made
me sick when I did too. I even had some bad dreams a couple of
times. One that made me the most upset was that I was going up
some stairs and then I opened a door and went to the bed there
to—well, you know, and when I was getting in and [...] like that
I saw how it was my mom and I jumped right out of that dream.
It woke me up feeling messed up.

Cloyd Longpre had questions. He was trying to show he
was, you know, interested in me. That I mattered to him. It was
a show for my mom. He thought it would matter to her. It was
hard for me to pretend back. There was nothing I could do about
who my mom went out with, and mostly I didn’t say or think
[...] about it. But there was something else I couldn’t point to
about him, and it made it even longer to sit there.

“You look a lot bigger for your age,” he said.

I should say no? I should say right?

“Built,” he went on. “Strong.” He looked at my mom,
stupid smiling. “I could maybe even put him to work now.”

I looked at my mom too. She had an expression that this
Cloyd was supposed to see as proud and that for me was to feel
proud too. He was only flirting with her, and she was only going
along with him.

“You gonna play football?”

I played street and schoolyard football a lot. My side usually
won. I played for the junior high team for two games and
stopped. I made more touchdowns on kickoffs than anyone, more
on interceptions too, and we won, but then I stopped going. I
didn’t like coaches telling me nothing, yelling. They screamed
and [...] and so [...] them. I didn’t like nobody getting on me,
never. [...] me off bad. I didn’t watch sports on TV, college or
pro. Sports was in my head, it was just for me to play, a game to
keep the brain in shape. I could play but didn’t and didn’t say
any of this to him though, because I could play this game too
and already I thought maybe I had to.

“Dile, tell him,” my mom said. “He’s an athlete, always the
fastest runner.”

She didn’t know that. It wasn’t even true no more. It hadn’t
been true since elementary, since sixth grade, when I finally got
beat by a black dude who was four legs and I never could beat,
hard as I tried and I tried. That other time, hundreds of years
ago, was probably the last time I told her about anything that
made me happy—or that she heard from me anyways.

“But you like sports?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, my first sound in front of him. That was
because I wanted to make my mom happy, not him.

“I like sports,” Cloyd Longpre said. “Though I can’t say I
get to follow it much these days.”

“Maybe he likes baseball,” my mom told him. “I think that’s
his favorite.” She came over and sat on the armrest of the couch,
next to me. She touched my hair like she did her skirt when she
first sat there. “Don’t you, m’ijo?” She had no idea. We never talked
nothing about me.

He didn’t wait to hear an answer from me. “What about
huntin’?” he said. “You like huntin’? You ever been?”

“No sir, “ I said.

He smiled and it came out dumb. This was when I saw it
that way for the first time. It was that he meant it, it was a real
and honest smile, and it came out looking stupid. “No sir you
never been, or no sir you don’t like it?” When he said no sir, I
could tell he was making fun of how I said it.

“He’s never been,” my mom told him for me fast, defensively.

“That I never been,” I told him. I don’t know which I
would have answered if my mom hadn’t jumped in for me. The
truth is, I didn’t want to go hunting and especially not with this
hillbilly.

“You’d love it,” he said. “Wait till you eat fresh venison or
fresh duck. Nothing better.”

I was back to not knowing what to say, or wanting to say
something, and it was way quiet.

“I can get you a rifle,” he said.

My mom looked at him sideways, then away from him, then
moved like she wanted to stand up.

“Not a big one, Sil. Just a twenty-two. To get the boy
used to it.”

“No guns. I don’t want him to shoot anybody,” she said.

I didn’t say. It didn’t seem to be about the gun anyways.

“Well then, what would you like?” he asked me. “What
would make you happy?”

My mom stood up, a little nervous, like she didn’t know
which way to go.

He noticed and spoke to her. “Okay. What say I promise
any one big thing? How’s that sound?” He ran his fingers through
that greased-back hair of his and messed it some. Then to me—
“You pick it.”

My mom, for a second or two, made her mad look. Then,
like that, she changed, and she went over to Cloyd Longpre and
sat on the armrest of that chair. When she was next to him, and
she put her hand on his shoulder, scratching him with her polished
nails, he looked up at her like he was the luckiest man
because her warm body was next to him, thank you, and thank
you Lord. She made her eyes go like she’s so flattered, and you’re
welcome. What he didn’t know, and I did, was that she went
like that lots of times. It was nothing special.

At the same time I watched this, while it seemed like he
might have forgot, I thought of something to ask for.

“One thing?” I said.

He had his finger rubbing the belt of my mom’s dress, above
her butt.

“You name it, partner.” That smile all stupid.
It’s that I picked up on what was really going on here, and
now I wanted to play too. I wanted to mess with him. “I wanna
go to Notre Dame,” I told him. Not that I did, because I didn’t.
I didn’t care. It’s what I thought of and I wanted to think of
something. It’s that I just saw a movie on TV, and people in it
were at Notre Dame.

He made a laugh that went along with his smile. My mom
was surprised too.

“You gotta get good grades to go there,” he said, “and, son,
that has all to do with you and nothing to do with me.”

“No—” I started.

“Oh, I hear you! But I thought you weren’t interested in
football!” he said. “He wants to see a football game. Are they
coming to town soon?”

It took me a couple of seconds. “No, that’s not what I
mean.” I almost gave it up right there. Then I didn’t. “I mean
Notre Dame the church. The one in Paris. In France.”

My mom and Cloyd Longpre both laughed like it was the
wildest thing they’d ever heard. They didn’t think I meant it.
That I could possibly mean it.

“Oh, that Notre Dame game!” he said.

“Well, you said anything!” my mom said, laughing just like
him.

“I did, I did,” he said. “Wouldn’t that cost a fortune!” he
told her. “The boy don’t think cheap, I give that to him.”
His body leaned toward me from the chair.

“You keep your eyes open and you watch me surprise you,”
he told me. A couple of times in the sentence, he made fast winks,
kind of crooked, like that was to let me know how this was a
special communication between us only.

That he didn’t believe me, or he did? I say that at first he
didn’t, but as he looked longer, he snagged something. Didn’t
catch what I was up to, because there was no way. I was good
at not being seen inside, even if I wasn’t sure yet how I would
hold him to this promise or whatever you call it, or how I was
going to make it into a big dream I was counting on. And so
yeah he was on to something behind my eyes, because when
we looked at each other again, him kind of rechecking, maybe
he saw more, and he backed off wondering what I was up to.