Spanish Son

There is strange mercy in bullet holes. Not only is there a sense that the world is real, but also that sense that, upon seeing them, you may have just enough luck to pass from the sufferings of the world with a few well-placed shots. But good luck and good marksmen were both hard to come by in those days. In those days, it was considered natural to be afraid for your life, but was there a time when it wasn’t? Not in my case. After the passing of the Eradication of Non-Aryan Families Act (ENAFA), which was passed by the United States government, it was all a downhill slope for us Mexicans as well as minorities in general. Butch Hager, who happened to have George W. Bush as a grandfather, was currently the president elect. After being vehemently accused of ‘betraying the American people’ by pulling out of Iraq, then-President Barack Obama was coldly defeated in the elections of 2012.1

And the rest was history. Congress soon fell back into tyranny after that. That was when my father had said that he had finally lost hope in America. You would think that with every cloud there’s a silver lining. With America, it’s the other way around. Living in America was like eating an apple pie filled with the poisonous apples that Snow White might have eaten. It was actually that horrible. 2

But who was I to complain? Psh, I was alive. What does that mean, exactly? I am not remotely close to figuring that out yet. From all I can glean with my average mind, it means nothing but, at its worst, 100 years of suffering, oppression and subjection to ignorance and bigotry. If you got lucky, you were taken away prematurely by a bullet, a knife, a lethal injection, a self-designed noose. I might be dumb, but I’m not stupid. I know at least enough to know when the world I live in, the universe I live in is merciless. And on May fifth, 2034, at 5:21 in the evening, I found this statement to be truer than ever before.3

Cinco de Mayo celebrations were, for all intents and purposes, forbidden where I lived. My only problem was how they got away with still calling it the ‘land of the free’ when they kept doing things like this. The whole conservative mindset, my grandfather told me, was, at its worst, to revert back to feudal ideology. Knights, chivalry, that sort of thing: real practical for the modern age, let me tell you. But the worst part about this is the fact that some people actually believe that this was what the world needed. Mix that with government and that gives you one strange margarita. 4

It was like any other day with Brittany and I, which usually meant that it was unlike any other day. Under ENAFA, we were denied education, so we weren’t in school that day. It was a strange plan they had, that government. They didn’t allow any Mexicans or anyone with any other nationality besides Irish, Scandinavian, German or English to have a job even 1 grand above the poverty level. They reversed affirmative action. They commissioned secret white supremacy groups to kill and rape non-whites in inner cities without punishment of law. The Ku Klux Klan was making a comeback of sorts, I guess you could say. Of course, no white supremacist you talked to would admit that. (Then again, I can’t remember the last time I had a coherent talk with a white supremacist.)5

All that being said, they still expected us to be upstanding members of society. I can’t remember how many times I heard the words “primitive races” uttered by some whites. And that was the nice way of saying it.6

Brittany and I were walking through downtown, through the comparative safety of the chain link fences, wrinkled brown-eyed rats smoking cigarettes in the shadow of run-down restaurants, shady parking lots and grimy streets of Little Mexico in St. Andres, Texas. If there was ever a racist town, this was it. 50 miles from the border, if that didn’t make people paranoid enough; this was the very town where the Cinco de Mayo slaughter took place. To make a long story short, an amigo with a sombrero on got fed up one day and took his shotgun and in broad daylight stormed into an office building and started firing. He turned the gun on himself after killing 17 people. What a way to represent his race, I’m telling you. The entire Mexican community here was as mad as can possibly be conceived, because we knew that our lives would be like the devil for many years to come. That wouldn’t be forgiven easily, especially in this town. And we were still feeling it.7

But as long as I had Brittany, all of that seemed less painful. Ironically named, she was Hispanic, like me, Puerto Rican to be exact, with beautiful ebony hair and deep, gorgeous brown eyes. The promotion of Germanic names was enacted with the ENAFA, and all of us Hispanic folk ended up with weird sounding names. For example, my name was Bartholomew. Luckily for Brittany and I, what they didn’t care about is if we held hands, walked together, fell in love. Just as long as we stayed within our little designation. It seems they couldn’t come up with a better idea than what they did in the 1800s with the Native Americans. Give us the worst section of land or, in our case, city, and expect us to live normal lives. 8

The way I understood it, we could fall in love and reproduce to our hearts content just as long as we didn’t ‘taint’ any Germanic Caucasians. I wanted to tell them ‘hey, good luck surviving in 200 years’ because God knows the world is made up of 95% non-Germanic people in the first place. (Don’t quote me on that figure, I’m no journalist). I guess their reasoning was that they ‘needed to build up the workforce’. 9

Which reminds me of why I’m recording all of this down. You see, the only purpose we have in America as of right now is to make the rich people at the top richer. There’s no way out of it. Shutting down all the black colleges was the first thing they did, my father told me. It was an outrage, he said, and there were riots all over the place. And I’m not sure what exactly happened next, but I know it had something to do with ‘the war on terror’ and the imposing of martial law. Any rioter was subject to be tried in the newly established “National Federal Homeland Security Court”. Soon after that, the Supreme Court resigned collectively. Or so they say. My father said they were blackmailed. You can imagine what a mess the public was about that.10

There’s no way out of it. My father worked at a linen factory here in Texas because that was the only thing he knew how to do. This is how it worked: you went to this Job Designation Center where you went in and were basically told what you were going to be doing the rest of your life, whether you liked it or not. You had to choice. It was how they had power over you.11

I had always remembered my father as being the one who knew everything about everything, the one who would chew out anybody on your behalf, the one who didn’t care if you had a smoke if you were having a bad day, the one who loved you no matter what you did, said, or thought. He loved people for who they are. I’m sure he loved Pricilla, my mom that I never met, the same way. I was their only child, but I didn’t consider myself doted upon. Just loved.12

So this is when it got ugly. My father was walking home from the ‘mexibus’ stop, as it was so infamously called, and Brittany and I were just walking our usual route through the section when I got a strange feeling that something was wrong. As soon as I spotted him walking up the pavement, I realized that he was in a big hurry. Constantly looking over his shoulder while trying to remain inconspicuous at the same time, I knew he was in some sort of trouble.13

That’s when I saw the cop. He was one of those state trooper types, with the aviators and the power mustache, a person who enjoyed beating up others for no reason. That type. Bulging and lumbering, he shoved his way through the crowd with an expression a person would wear if they were wading through cockroaches. This was the last place he wanted to be.14

“Hey! You gotta lotta guts comin’ ‘round here, 5-0!” Someone shouted from an upper story window. Ominously, the policeman took out his radio and muttered something in it while looking in the direction of the shouted comment. It was foolish to sass a cop these days.15

Dad saw me, then quickly looked away. He was not going home. I stood dumbfounded for a second, but then my delayed street smarts kicked in. He was being followed so a white supremacy gang could come and rob him later tonight. I knew it because that kind of stuff happened every other week. I watched him as he made off for Juarito’s, occasionally shooting a furtive glance over his shoulder.16

Next thing I knew, the redneck cop’s gun was drawn. It took me a moment to realize that it was pointed at me. ‘What in blazes?’ was my first thought. Then I realized I had taken off my sweater earlier, leaving my shirt exposed. My shirt, which my father had bought for me, had an upside-down American flag on it and said ‘I pledge allegiance to Johnny Ramone’ on it. I knew I would be safe walking around amongst my fellow Hispanics with it on, but I hadn’t counted on seeing this cop. 17

“Get on the ground!” Before I had a chance to react, the cop was within 5 feet of me. “I said down, d-----!” 18

I remembered watching movies where cops read suspects their Miranda rights. Those must have been the days. I couldn’t move, so I was subsequently struck across the face with the butt of a pistol, then wrestled roughly onto my stomach. 19

He bent down to whisper in my ear. His breath smelled like chili cheese dogs and beer. “Now that’s a pretty nice little dish we’ve got there,” he sneered. “Should we call it an even trade? I let you go, I keep the dearie locked up in my basement?”20

I was so outraged I couldn’t speak. A series of frustrated half words and curses flew from my mouth. I felt my hair being yanked then, unexpectedly, my head was thrown into the pavement. So much for my front two teeth.21

Next, there erupted a scream of pain from the cop. Feeling his grip loosen, I whipped my body around. I turned to see Brittany bashing the back of his head with a lead pipe like a murderess. No idea she even had the thing. However, respect soon turned to fear as realization began to hit me.22

“Brittany, don’t!”23

It seemed to happen in slow motion: The cop spun around and took a step back, bringing his weapon to bear. I saw the look of horror, helpless and frantic, in Brittany’s eyes as she raised the lead pipe for another strike. 24

It never fell. The gunshot seemed to echo through the street as I watched the bullet connect with her face. 25

And just like that, it was over. I felt like throwing up and murdering the cop all at once. But how could the death of one cop stop the blood from flowing? The warm sun above could not console me; only cause me to squint away from death.26

I don’t really remember what happened next. A dozen people armed with tooth and nail flung themselves at the cop. 27

Who knows what became of him. Nothing could change the fact that Brittany was gone. I winced as her body flopped to the pavement. I couldn’t look. Tears glinted in the Spanish sun as my body began to become less numb. Under the evening light, so characteristic of this universe I found myself in, a piece of newspaper floated on the soft, seemingly kind breeze in front of my face. I snatched it angrily, sobbing, and turned it over.28

There was an advertisement. “In life, you’re your own disc jockey.”29

Maybe that was the silver lining I was looking for.30