Soda

This piece was originally published in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue of Epiphany. That issue is currently out of print now, so I figured it was safe to post it here. This was the first essay I ever had published in print.  

Daddy is losing weight. His face is a canyon, broken in over years and peaked at places where skin is pushed out by bone. If he lied down on his right side, his left cheek could hold water, a scruffy valley, enough water to wade in or cool my feet after touching them to hot cement. Daddy’s not an arm tapper. Not a rope tyer. Not a spoon burner. Dad palms his mouth and tips his head back and lets little white things disintegrate in his callous throat. He wears clean shirts, buttoned at the top, over thin white tank tops. He knows how to wobble like an adult now, never brings too much attention to himself. He is with Butch, sometimes with Arthur. They are outside of Butch’s house, in the back where the alley is, where the garage leads. They smoke cigarettes in between and drink canned beer. 

In the alley, they mumble. They talk about people they mutually know. Theresa. Gladys. Mario. “Can you believe that fucker?” “Yeah, he owes me money.” “Toss me another.” They put their hands in the pockets of their zip-up sweatshirts. They wear beanies that fold up. They all have moustaches. They all are not in their twenties. Dad is dreading his walk home the next morning, seven city blocks in the stinging mid-morning sun. He will be partially dehydrated when he walks past my elementary school, the mote that stands between him and our front door. He comes home at this time to avoid mom, who leaves for work at 7:30 each morning and doesn’t come back until five. She takes the only car we have, and he comes home and sleeps for six hours in preparation for her pointed fingers, two at him (pointer and middle), two at herself (ring and pinky), thumb pointed down. 

Either his hands are shaking or his eyes are blurry; he’s not sure which. But he can’t stop looking at them and doesn’t know what to do with them when he’s standing idle. Sweatshirt pockets. Pant pockets. Folded across his chest. One down to the side by his waist, the other holding a damp can of Budweiser. He wants to say something now but can’t or does but doesn’t realize it or does but does it so low that Arthur and Butch can only hear sounds, like he’s talking in his sleep about things they don’t know about. But they have no intentions of waking him up, rather they wish to fall asleep along side him.

Daddy’s hair is short now but used to be curly and long like mine. When my mom cuts off my locks for the first time just after I learn to talk, dad doesn’t talk to her for three days, but she keeps the curls in a baggy, alongside an unused Dodger game ticket and Fernando Valenzuela rookie card, and tapes them to a cardboard page behind a piece of plastic in my baby book. Most say I look more like her because of my light skin, because of my small frame, because of my smile and my social nature, even at five. But when puberty hits, I’ll get his voice, the same one my brother has, and people will call and they’ll say, “Oh, you sound just like your dad now,” but they’ll never mistake me for him.

It’s 9:30PM when we come, lights beamed down the alleyway, my mom tired and her hair up. “I goddamn knew it,” she says. “I goddamn knew it.” They’re on her side, standing in a triangle, and the light makes their eyes squint like rats digging banana peels out of a public trash heap. Mom rolls down the window before we come to a stop, and she says to daddy, “You know you have to take Timmy to school tomorrow.” This isn’t a suggestion, not a reminder. “You think I don’t know that?” he responds. “What the fuck are you doing here then?” she says. “I’m just hanging out. I was coming back right now.” I’m looking away, out my window at a wooden fence on my side. “Bullshit,” she says. “Don’t bring that shit here, Libby,” he says, his words all connected together like a piece of gum that stretches rather than breaks. Butch chimes in. “Why you always have to come over here bitching, Libby?” Mom responds. “Fuck you, Butch. He has a family.” Dad. “Don’t fucking talk to him like that.” “Timmy is right here, you son of a bitch. Do you not see him?” “Of course I do.” Dad kneels down as much as he can. “Hey mijo, I’ll be home in a little bit, okay? Don’t listen to us, okay?” Mom begins rolling up her window, “You’re a piece of shit.” And we roll off, back to 2020 Almadale. 

Dad stumbles home a couple of hours later, and I hear a crash against the wall along with the slight reverberation of a ring. It’s the rotary telephone from our living room. I hear muffled curse words but fall asleep before it all ends. 

When Daddy takes me to school the next morning, he packs me a lunch in a paper bag because he can only find my thermos, not the plastic box I carry it all in. I eat my cold, microwaved corn dog and my potato chips but drink a sip of what’s in my thermos and stop immediately. It’s not punch like mom normally packs but soda, and I’m not allowed soda, not at home but more importantly not at school. But it tastes like heaven, sparkly and sweet, like a pancake breakfast in a Ninja Turtle plastic cup. I hold the thermos close, away from my friends and sip some more. Then a little more. Then a gulp. I swish it around in my teeth and close my eyes when I swallow. I want to never have anything else again. But when school ends, my hands are shaking, and I drop the thermos and what’s left over spills out onto the concrete. Ms. Noma comes over to help me but notices the color of the liquid. She wipes her finger against the concrete, sniffs it, and yells out, pointing at the air, “It’s soda!”

She lectures me, tells me I know better, tells me not to bring it again. I nod with my head down. Dad is behind the fence waiting for me to be dismissed. When I get to him, he asks me what I was in trouble for. I say, “I’m not allowed to bring soda to school, daddy.” He says, “Oh, I know. But I didn’t think they actually cared.”