Jesús

Ms. Anna Wiess moved to Santa Cruz only the year before, from New York. Faustino, the Santa Cruz cop that picked up Jesús sleeping under the boardwalk already knew her reputation. She was the right one to call. Not a hand holder for these kids. No nonsense. No rescue fantasy. Faustino knew she listened. He gave Jesús a vagrancy citation to keep him from running away while he got hold of Ms. Weiss; but then he told the DA to put it at the bottom of the stack and lose it.

Ms. Weiss brought Jesús to the ER. She was glad to see Luke was on shift. “Hey Luke.” She knew they were from the same mold.

“Sixteen-year-old runaway from El Paso. Says his dad kicked him out. Won’t say why. Read between the lines. Tried to get him up to Huckleberry in The City, but they're full and he’s really not that rough. Can you guys hold him here just for tonight? Honor student even. No drugs. Not even weed.” Luke squinted at her. “I know, right?”

“What about his parents? What do they say?”

“Called this morning. They just said ‘no English’ and I didn’t have a translator.”

Luke found the number and dialed. “Buenas tardes. Soy el doctor Howell en Santa Cruz de California. ¿Usted es el padre de Jesús Díaz?”

The unit assistant looked up “Huh? I didn’t know he even spoke Spanish. His accent though. It’s different. Like Bad Bunny or something.”

“No. No tengo un hijo llamado Jesús. Tengo un solo hijo y está en casa conmigo.”

“¿Jesús no es su hijo?”

“No, Doctor. No es mi hijo.”

“Luke? What was that?”

What?

“That. You on the phone.”

“You don’t make assumptions? Yeah, right, Mariah,” he joked.

She smiled and tossed her long brunette hair back.

“No surprises: Jesús is ‘not my son.’ I’ll document the call and copy CPS. Please say I don’t have to do a formal report. I mean you guys are already involved, right?”

Jesus spent the next several hours in the ER. Luke came in and introduced himself. Asked if he could sit down. Jesús thought that was weird. Everybody else seemed in a hurry to get in and out. “Is he one of those creeps?”

He just sat quietly. You might have mistaken it for technique but tonight Luke was just tired. Eventually, “Where’d you sleep last night?”

“Not under the boardwalk, like the cop said. It was on the cliff. Over the beach. I found a rock to sleep on. When I woke up the sun was out, and I saw the ocean for the first time. It was awesome! There were some stairs down to the… orilla. I never saw the ocean before. That’s why I came here. That and because of Lost Boys. You know, the movie?”

Luke smiled and nodded. “Which of the boys are you?”

Almost before Luke had finished: “Michael. Now you're gonna ask why, right? He’s between worlds.”

Yeah, Ms. Weiss was right. He shouldn’t have doubted her.

“What’s your favorite class?

“Like ’em all but English, Mrs. Brantley’s Brit Lit class.” Jesús gave a half laugh. “We were reading this crazy-ass essay about eating babies.”

Luke thought of Marco.

Dr. Nilda Candelario had already bought the house in Reno where she would retire next month. Luke met her in his first year of medical school when it was still in Cayey. Dr. Candelario always reminded him of Greece: Modern Greece. She didn’t look for a fight. But when she had to pick a side, she always ended up on the right one. When he was troubled he came to her, and she always made time to listen.

She sat behind her desk in her corner office and chided Luke gently. “No, not from the hospital. That would be an ethics violation. It’s improper for you to discuss it with him in the setting of the hospital. Period. I hope you haven’t brought it up to him. Professional boundaries. But yes, there are grey areas, and this is one.” She looked at her desktop screen after an email pinged. “I’m willing to talk with legal. Ann…I mean Ms. Weiss…- If she wants to introduce it outside the hospital it’s out of my lane. Stay out of it for now, I'll give her a call myself.

“You know if it ever comes up, it will be the White Savior issue.”

“I know the optics, Nilda. Is that a reason to not do the right thing?”

“Be prepared, Luke.”

He smiled, “You always looked out for me, even back in Cayey.”

“Ya, basta.” Waving him off.

It made Luke feel warm. Nilda had always been careful to never mix languages at work. Back in Cayey in ’85 Luke recalled a UNESCO sign in the library: “Mezclar idiomas es una señal de mala educación.” They drilled it into us: “It makes you sound uneducated,” they said.

It was good to see Nilda so playful again.

As Luke anticipated, Nilda navigated the bureaucracy as if she had written the manual herself. A month earlier, Luke’s son Rodric had enlisted in the Navy. And Missy was away at Oregon. Only Stan, sixteen now, was at home. Jesús became a ward of the State of California. Technically Luke’s foster son.

Deckard greeted Jesús on his first arrival to the house. “You have a dog? In the house? Dope. ¿Cómo se llama? …You mean like Rick Deckard? The ink one or Harrison Ford?”

“Del libro. Dad discovered Dick in the 70’s, before it was cool.”

Deckard kept sniffing Jesús. Stan noticed, smiled, but didn’t comment.

“Luke likes Dick, too?”

“People think he’s just SciFi, but if you read closely, not just scan, there’s so much more.”

“You’re like so…güero. ¿Por qué hablas español?”

“No lo esperabas?” No has conocido a Mami todavía. Es super trad --de la isla. Jayuya. Te enseño el cuarto. Rodric, este, mi hermano se fue al Navy el mes pasado. It’s all yours now.

“Mayor o menor.”

“Hermano mayor.”

“¿Cuántos son?”

“Tres. Una hermana. Rodric y yo. Soy el menor. Missy está en la uni.”

“¿Y tú? ¿Cuántos son?”

“One younger brother.” Speaking in English made it easier to talk about his estranged family now.

“Y tu mamá, ¿no está?”

“Está en Bélgica. Con mis abuelos. Regresa el mes que viene.”

“Es belga?”

“Puertorriqueña ...este… bueno… es un arroz con culo.”

Jesús blinked. It sounded so ridiculous, “Arroz con culo?”

It was an extinct slang from Puerto Rico that his dad used all the time. Like his Spanish was stuck in a 1980’s time warp. Catalina hated when he used it.

”Mande?”

“Bro, you’re so… Mexican.

Stan smiled, realizing his own confusion about what was standard and what was jerga boricua, “un revolú…Tampoco. I mean, complicated.”

“Rice and ass!” Jesús laughed. “Definitely not derivative. I see why Luke likes it.”

Jesús’s story slowly came out.

“Before I left the house, I told her I was working at El Super. Mami, she was still awake when I came home. Late. Demasiado. Sentada en el comedor. Mirando la puerta.

“Mami? ¿Por qué estás despierta todavía?”

“Hijo, ¿dónde andabas? Fui al Super y no te hallé. Me dijeron que no trabajaste hoy. Estaba bien preocupada.”

“Lo siento, mami.”

He felt so much shame for lying to his mother.

“¿Estás usando drogas?”

Jesús looked down. He couldn’t lie to her again. Not to his mother.

“No, No mami, no es eso.”

She wanted to know.

“Pues, ¿Chui? ¿Qué es? Dímelo. Quiero saber.”

How to tell?

“Me… me,” each word came slowly, "me gustan los hombres.”

“¿Y?… No es gran…” Then she realized what I meant and just went silent.

“No se lo digas a Papi. Por favor.”

Jesús already knew what his father would do if he found out. And Jesús couldn’t bear to be separated? from his mother.

“Hijo, es mi marido y sabes que somos iguales tú y yo. No se lo voy a decir, pero si me pregunta no le voy a mentir tampoco.

Pasó un momento sin decir nada.

“Hijo, quiero que vayas con el padre. Quiero que tú y yo nos vayamos al cielo juntos después de morir.”

It wasn’t shame. She wanted to be sure we would be together after death.

We both knew he was going to ask. She left $200 for me in an envelope with my name on it. And a note: ‘Eres mi hijo.’ Y esto.” He held up the brown felt escapulario around his neck.

Jesús enrolled at Stan’s high school in junior year.

They spent that summer at the farm in Thomasville. Walking with Stan by the stream that fedthe mill pond, Jesús remembered El Paso.

“Pero Papi. He’d get his puro, pull his chair right up to the TV like he was ringside or something. Te juro. He loved Cassandro. Yo también. He’d yell and cheer. Bam! He’d clap his hands over his head with the takedown. Papi was more fun to watch than el combate.

But then go figure. Cinco minutos después, he’s going, “Ningún hijo mío.”

They walked in silence along the earthen dam to the swimming spot at the edge of the mill pond. Stan smiled as he watched two ducks preen each other's feathers, then scurry down to the stream below the dam.

“I always thought orilla sounds so much more beautiful than…”

“Bank,” Jesús clunked. “If Tolkien spoke Spanish that would have been his cellar door.”

Jesus mimicked turning on the radio then boomed “¡Lucha! ¡Libre!” Each word was a complete sentence. Stan laughed, then crouched in playful seriousness circling Jesús, “Comienza con respeto pero ya sabes que el Quimotoxicol te va a madrear.” After the takedown, grappling in the meadow, Jesús felt Stan’s muscles against his. They stopped struggling— locked eyes. Kissed.

Sitting on the front porch of Uncle Sonny’s farmhouse with a book in his lap, Luke looked up and smiled, as if something in the words he had read amused him.

Jesús and Stan promised each other not to let whatever future they might have together influence their college decisions. They both got letters from Santa Cruz and Berkeley and Stan from Chicago. It was the week of the polar vortex in the Midwest. Stan asked his family to witness a coin toss. Gathered in the kitchen Stan tossed the quarter into the air. He thought of his grandparents’ farm in Belgium, the abandoned citron orchard in Jayuya, Uncle Sonny’s farm in Metcalf, and the river of afternoon fog rolling across the Bay toward Berkeley.