I’d walked into their room to get a couple of bucks off of Pop’s money clip, the silver one with a gold peso on it, I’d seen them. Pop and Mama are not that old, maybe forty-one or forty-two, but seeing them laid-out like that, thrown around the bed, they looked older than they were. In old pictures I’ve seen of Mama, she has this clean white skin, long black hair, and big eyelashes. When I look at them, I understand how Pop fell in love with her. In these old pictures, I can also see what she saw in my father. In one black and white photo, just after his younger old school gangster days, he is in a boxer’s stance, his hair piled high and greased with Tres Flores pomade, his eyes telling you he owned you no matter how you felt about it. The color of my eyes, a mix of green and brown, my ojos borrados I got from her, but this look I had, the squint that always seemed to be there, was all from Pop.
I asked Ángel, “So, where’s that chandelier you were going to put inside?” One time we’d seen this old lady driving a Ford Galaxie that had a crystal chandelier in the back window. This old lady had been riding down the road with just her eyes over the steering wheel, that chandelier moving in all these crazy ways. Ever since then we’d see a tricked-out ride and say it was a real piece of junk if it didn’t have a chandelier in the back window.
“You know Güero, same old story, not enough money, not enough luck.” He and Smiley and the rest of our friends called me Güero and not Cirilo because my skin was lighter than theirs and because of my eyes. My skin I got from Mama too, who had so much Spanish blood she could pass for a gringa until you heard her talk, and then you’d know she was just as Mexican as the rest of us. The only reason I looked Mexican at all was because of Pop and the Izquierdo side of the family, who were all dark and tall. Even though I was tall like the Izquierdos, I always wished I was dark like them too, because I was a shade between Pop and Mama.
I laughed and said, “Hey Smiley, why don’t you get in the middle?”
“Come on, I was here first. I always get in the middle. Every day, every day in the middle. You all always get your way.”
“You don’t have to cry about it, cry baby. We only get our way because you’re so skinny like a stick, and it’s easier if you sit in the middle.”
“Ay güey,” he said. “If you sit next to the window, the chotas are going to pull us over and give us a ticket for being so ugly you’re causing all kinds of accidents because people won’t be able to take their eyes off of it like they can’t look away from a car wreck.”
Ángel faked laughing, then stopped real quick and said, “That was stupid, Smiley.”
Smiley said, “Both you all can kiss my brown nalgas. I don’t care what you say. I got the window this time.”
“See, I knew you could do better. You just had to apply yourself.” Ángel said. “Brown nalgas…that was funny, and it had class too.” Smiley gave this satisfied nod and made sure I saw this.
Smiley got out and held out his hand for me to sit inside as if their truck was a limo and he was the chauffeur. He smiled real big and this wasn’t the prettiest thing to see because of his teeth, especially with the sun shining right down on him. Smiley had crooked teeth that looked like yellow seashells all pushed together, but he didn’t care who saw his teeth. He smiled without covering up, and he always smiled no matter what he or any of us was going through. This was why we all called him Smiley since no one could remember when. We also called him this because his name was Ismael, so it was pretty natural to call him Smiley. Even the teachers at Dennett High School called him that. You couldn’t really call him anything else.
Since I didn’t want to argue about it anymore, I got in the middle. What Smiley had said about never getting what he wanted had some truth to it. Smiley had always been the smallest and weakest of us, the kind of friend you don’t want to leave alone at clubs or football games or in Mexico—any place where vatos are just looking to beat someone down. With his back all bent over and with his teeth, Smiley was an easy target. You could just bump him in the mouth and he’d bleed.
His brother Ángel was the complete opposite. He was taller than me, thick in the chest, shoulders, and arms. He didn’t have the gangster slouch. His chin was always up high, challenging the world. Ángel was bench-pressing two forty-five pound plates back in junior high, still lifted weights in the Dennett High School weight room, and could now bench double that. The coaches always told him to go out for football, but he never wanted any of it, and I never knew the real reason other than the fact that he didn’t like taking orders from anyone. He would lift weights at the same time as the varsity football players, and none of them ever told him anything, even though not just anyone used that weight room. The thing was, no one ever messed with Ángel. It wasn’t just because he was built like a lineman or one of those Mexican Mafia vatos from prison. Ángel backed up his size and could throw down and mess you up gacho, sometimes lay you out with one punch. I’d seen him do it.
Besides, I knew this for myself because this is how we had become friends, me and Ángel fighting back when we were seventh graders at Dennett Junior High. I knew how hard he could hit.
two
When we drove into the La Plaza Mall parking lot in McAllen, there was this long line of cars trying to get out, and a long line of cars trying to get in. It was like cruising Tenth Street on Saturday night. Even though we were from Dennett, we knew McAllen had the most money, the nice stores, and the mall. Even if there was barrio on the South Side of McAllen where my grandma lived, this is where the rich people from Mexico came to shop. The fresas with land and titles could cross the border, then drive back with carloads of name brand clothes and perfumes they had bought at Dillard’s, crossing freely unlike the poor Mexicans who crossed the river at night, led by coyotes who took advantage of them.
Money made all the difference in the Valley. Even though all of the towns are pushed together, where you can be on one side of the street and be in one town, then cross the street and be in the other, there are differences between them, and then differences within them. Like Pharr was really hood in some parts and you couldn’t just drive into some neighborhoods with your windows open and think you were going to be safe, you could also accidentally drive into a trailer park that was full of Winter Texans with money, old gringos that lived in the Valley while their homes up north were snowed in.
Or you could go to Sharyland and see all of the nice houses and the white people from the old families and wonder if you were still in the Valley, or then see a house with all kinds of Mexican Nationals coming and going, and wonder if they made their money from the import/export business that no one asked about.
Dennett was like that too. It had its barrio and then it had places like where I lived. When you thought about it, each town was a little contradiction, a north side and a south side, rich and poor, old and new. They had this in common, but the difference between the towns is that their extremes are more extreme. Even though you could have rich and poor people in the same towns, we all knew that no one had money like McAllen or Sharyland did and no one had barrios like Dennett or Pharr did.
As we waited in line to get into the mall, Smiley, who was still sitting next to the window, pulled this trick he was always doing. He leaned forward to where someone outside of the truck couldn’t see him. Smiley had his head down low and he was laughing.
A car full of girls looked at me and Ángel, and started laughing because we were sitting so close together without a space between us. To everybody outside of the truck, because they couldn’t see Smiley, it looked like me and Ángel were sitting all lovey-dovey. I started punching Smiley in the ribs, but he wouldn’t sit up straight. He just started laughing harder. So then Ángel put his arm around me and I started punching him too. What I didn’t know in that moment was that this stupid game we were playing
