Where We Come From
ALSO BY OSCAR CÁSARES
Brownsville
Amigoland
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2019 by Oscar Cásares
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cásares, Oscar, 1964– author.
Title: Where we come from : a novel / Oscar Cásares.
Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, [2019] | “Borzoi books.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2018043234 (print) | LCCN 2018044321 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525655442 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525655435 (hardcover)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Literary.
Classification: LCC PS3603.A83 (ebook) | LCC PS3603.A83 W47 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018043234
Ebook ISBN 9780525655442
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover photograph by Richard Cummins/Getty Images
Cover design by Tyler Comrie
v5.4
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Contents
Cover
Also by Oscar Cásares
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prólogo / Los rules
I : Un favor
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
II : De camino
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
III : La madrina
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
IV : Chivito
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
For Becky, and for Adrian and Elena
Solemn’s the night, but man
has disposed his fraternal signs,
and groping my way along roads and shadows
I reached the lit doorway, the little
point of star that was mine,
the bread crumb that the wolves in the forest
had not devoured.
—Pablo Neruda, Canto General
Prólogo / Los rules
No kicking the ball against the side of the house. Not the pink house in back and not the big blue one in front. She promises Orly that if later he eats all his dinner, she will take him to the field behind the school to make exercise, so he can practice all he wants kicking the ball. Allá, Nina tells him, you can kick and chase after the ball all you want, for as long and fast as you want, until the sun goes down, until they turn off the lights and leave you in the dark, until you get so tired of running back and forth you fall down, there on the ground, dead. She adds that last part to make her point, to exaggerate and maybe be funny, but when Orly doesn’t laugh or at least smile she wonders if she said it wrong, because when she repeats the words to herself, in her mind, as they occurred to her—¡Hasta qué caes muerto!—it sounds funny, at least to her—the idea of a young boy wanting to play so much, having so much energy on a summer day that he keeps running and running and running until his legs and body give out, y saz he falls down and dies. Nina considers explaining to him that what she said was only an expression, something people say, help him understand how she meant to be funny—she probably said the same thing to his father when she used to take care of him—but sometimes what people say in one language sounds different in another and maybe if she says it the way she heard it in her head he’ll get the joke and they can both laugh. But instead she changes the subject and tells him that her mother used to rent the pink house, but that was before the accident and now her mother only sits in bed watching her novelas and Judge Judy. Nina tells him the foil on the windows of the pink house is for when it gets hot. This last detail in case he is curious. Foil on the windows is the best way to keep a house cool and save money. Who doesn’t know that? She has it on the pink house in back and not the blue one in front because she doesn’t need everyone who drives by seeing how they live. Pink and baby blue, those were ideas of her mother. The foil is there to protect her makeup boxes from getting too hot. Orly listens, but he wonders why she can’t put the boxes in the blue house, if the closet in the room where he sleeps is almost empty. That, plus the blue house is really only big if you compare it to the pink house, and every time she calls it a big house he wants to say they could probably fit three of her “big” houses into the first floor of his dad’s house, not including the garage, but he keeps all this to himself because of the next rule.
* * *
—
Have respect. Orly might talk back to his father, but not here, not to his Nina. No, señor. Here is not Houston, a place where people spend all day driving in their cars, nobody looking at nobody unless they want to say something bad, una cochinada, blaming God for their bad luck, because they can’t cross from this lane to that lane, like He was the one who made the light turn from yellow to red. Sí, porque He has nothing more to do than to control all the traffic lights in Houston. Who told them to go look for work that was so far away they would always be in a hurry? Who said that if she is driving a little slow it’s okay to honk their horn and raise their finger at her, a woman already in her late sixties? Here Nina only wants there to be love. She gives Orly a hug and a kiss on the cheek first thing in the morning and then again at night, como el sol y la luna. And so when she says, Mijito, do not be sad, he needs to stop being sad. Things are going to get better. He is not the first boy to be sad, he won’t be the last one. It is sad what happened, but that was last year and now he’s here with his Nina and she wants him to be happy. Orly tells her he’s okay, but “okay” isn’t enough when she wants happy. The first day she took him to the zoo, which was fun even if he had to take turns holding the umbrella or pushing Mamá Meche’s wheelchair, and later at the herpetarium—the one exhibit he was most looking forward to—he had to go in alone because Mamá Meche didn’t want to be in a dark room looking at the faces of so many snakes and later have ugly dreams. The second day to the beach, but there Mamá Meche said that in her life she had already felt enough sand and dirt and mud between her toes, and besides Nina was afraid for him to get into the water by himself, so he act
ually only saw the beach from the backseat of the car, and later they stopped by the Dairy Queen for lunch. The third day to the mall. But she must have forgotten that a mall in Brownsville is not a mall in Houston. Here there’s no ice rink, no Apple Store, no Smoothie King, there isn’t even a Starbucks. Seriously. How do you open a mall without a Starbucks? He imagines this is what it’s like living in a developing country, Cuba maybe, only in this case with air-conditioning and a Chick-fil-A. There’s a movie theater, but he hasn’t been to the movies since the last time he went with his mom and his brother, Alex. On the way home from the mall, she mentioned Matamoros but only to say it wasn’t safe enough to be taking him across the bridge. Days four and five at the house, reading and taking screen breaks every thirty minutes or so, which is probably what he would be doing if his dad had let him stay in Houston. But to Nina it doesn’t seem right for him to be stuck inside, same as it doesn’t seem right for a twelve-year-old boy to take medicine for his feelings. And not just because of what happened to his mama, because Nina remembers Orly was taking the medicine already two or three years ago when she went to visit him in Houston. She has more opinions, but she keeps these to herself and for now is just thankful his daddy brought him. If he let her, she would keep him for the whole summer.
* * *
—
Always pray before eating. At first Nina was saying the prayer in Spanish, but now at the table and even when it’s his time to sleep she says it in Spanish and then again in English, because she worries Orly might not really know what his father says he knows. It doesn’t matter that he and his brother go to a private school where they teach them Spanish, because here, in this house, she has heard him speak it only to Mamá Meche and then just two or three words, a Buenas noches or a Buenos días, before he goes quiet again. His father claims Orly understands everything but just prefers to respond in English. That they shouldn’t force it on him. But this is coming from a man who speaks less and less of it each time he comes to visit her, like Spanish wasn’t his first language, like he never grew up here so close to Mexico, like now he is more from Houston than from Brownsville, like people in this country are not allowed to speak more than one way.
* * *
—
Eat all your food. Not just the parts you like best, tus favoritos, but the whole plate. This is not the Luby’s, where you can point to what you want them to put on the tray and then pass up the rest of the food like you’re driving in a neighborhood where you don’t know anybody. He has no idea how many people live with so much less. If he knew how people went without food he would not be asking if he needs to eat everything on his plate. If he can eat only half of what she serves him. If he can eat the arroz but not the calabacita. Eat and be thankful, Nina tells him. She doesn’t want to know about his favorite and un-favorite foods. All foods need to be his favorites. He needs to make them his favorites for today, and tomorrow have a new favorite and another one for the next day. Like that. And not just the tortillas. They are not for him to eat as fast as she or Rumalda, the one day that Rumalda comes to help around the house, can make them and then for him to say he’s too full to eat the rest of his food. She doesn’t want to hear that she is serving him too much. At first she thought Orly was just chiflado, the type of boy who is used to getting what he wants, but then she remembered all the things his father told her about his diet. The skim milk, the orange juice with calcium, and no Cokes, no sweets after seven o’clock, nothing of what he calls junk food, no potato chips, no cinnamon rolls, no donuts, and the pan dulce maybe just for special occasions and not during the week. Then for what are the panaderías open every day? For that Orly’s father has no answers. He makes it sound like his life hasn’t worked out because she gave him these foods when he was growing up, like it made all his teeth fall out and now he walks with a limp because when he was little she served him a taco de barbacoa with some Hawaiian Punch. Even if now he has money and drives a car so big it barely fits under the carport. All that money from making the advertisements they show on TV. Yesterday he called to remind her about Orly’s chewy vitamins and the nasal spray for his allergies. She has never known a man to be so concerned about his child, but then it occurs to her that this list of foods and vitamins and medicines is something the boy’s mother must have left behind.
* * *
—
Stay away from the canal. Even if it’s usually not very deep and you know how to swim, that’s not the kind of water for you to be playing in. Sometimes people throw away old tires and other things they’re not supposed to be putting into a canal. Sometimes there are spiders and scorpions and even snakes and other animals you don’t want to see. When it gets so hot like it is now they go to drink the dirty water and then look for a place to stay cool. They might be hiding in the shade of the ebony tree, they might be hiding in the grass where you step, they might be hiding under the pink house, especially the other side where the bottom of the house is open and easy for them to slide and crawl into the dirt, and then you don’t see them until it’s too late. Better just to stay away from the little house and the backyard. If you want to be outside, go sit on the front steps and look up at the parrots flying this way and that way, up and around the sky, all together like a little boy trying to hold a big green kite on a windy day. They come from across the river, but to them it is all the same. They only know to fly and sing and drop cacas on the roof of people’s cars. Nobody asks them what they are doing here because a bird is a bird, and no matter where they are that’s their home. Los inocentes.
* * *
—
Pick up the seat. She shouldn’t have to say this one. She says it because there is only one small bathroom for the three of them. Her mother has a bedside commode she never uses and wants nowhere near her bed. And if Orly forgets to pick up the seat, then he needs to wipe. Because even a little wet is still wet. Nobody likes surprises in the middle of the night. If she wants surprises she can go buy a lotto ticket. He should go in and do what he needs to do but not take one of his books. Find another place to read. It’s a bathroom, not a library. Her mother never knows when she’s going to have an urge, and they can’t be waiting for him to get to the end of the next chapter. Nina tells him to knock because the lock on the door is hard to unlock and so she doesn’t lock it and neither should he. If he gets locked inside, his tío Beto will have to come with his tools to let him out.
* * *
—
No computers at the kitchen table. Even if it is just the two of them eating breakfast and she’s busy scanning the pages of the Bargain Book, her reading glasses up to her face and a ballpoint in hand, or later reading the Herald, the whole time complaining about the things people try to get away with, taking advantage of the ones who have less and don’t know any better. The police, the sheriffs, the politicians, the judges, the teachers, the coaches and principals, even some people from the church who are supposed to know good from bad. Aprovechados is what they are. Nobody cares anymore, they let those selling las drogas go free. Or they think building a wall will solve all the problems, that the poor ones will stare up at it and forget their children are hungry y que los malos are trying to hurt them. Orly nods, half listening to what she says, but also waiting for her to finish so he can explain that it’s actually a tablet, an iPad Air 2, and not a computer. That a device like this can do some things a computer can but really he’s limited because it’s harder to do things like load videos onto YouTube or play Minecraft with any of his friends on the server, but still Carson keeps sending him screenshots on Instagram of the super mall he’s building, and then his dad is always changing the password on the parental restrictions, more than even his mom used to, so there’s no updating anything. And really he only has his iPad to get messages and see what other people are doing for fun over the summer. He skips the part about Nina not having an Xbox because they’ve already been over it, how she can’t afford to be buying this Xbox
he keeps bringing up, especially not for the three weeks he’s going to be here.
* * *
—
No playing with La Bronca. La Bronca is not a dog to play with, for her to chase you in circles around the grapefruit tree, for you to throw a stick so she can bring it back in her mouth, to rub her belly and then put her on your lap so she can lick your face and leave babas everywhere. La Bronca looks old and slow but that only makes her meaner. She is part Chow, with patches of her rust-colored fur missing from her dark haunches, and part something else that makes her head look like a block of wood with ears and a wide jaw. The dog stays chained to the pink house and lies in the cool dirt just under the wooden steps, next to where the last people who rented the house years ago, a shrimper and his wife from Nicaragua and their three kids, grew roses and hibiscuses in some old Folger’s cans. La Bronca used to be tied to the álamo tree in front, but then one night last summer somebody crossed the canal and got into the backyard and from the pink house stole Nina’s makeup boxes. Which is only half true—the dog was in the front until recently and now is in the back but for different reasons having nothing to do with anyone stealing the makeup that Nina doesn’t even sell anymore—reasons she can’t get into, won’t say, and wishes she hadn’t brought up because it only makes Orly want to know more. Why? Because here in this town, if they could get away with it and make some money, they would steal the makeup off her face. Which is an exaggeration, obviously, but still true. Why? Because here they steal anything they can—your trash can, your lawn chairs, your water hose, your shirts and pants off the clothesline, your Christmas lights and your Baby Jesus from the manger. Which she only wishes were exaggerations. Why? Because here there are more poor people than almost anywhere else in this country. He can look it up on his computer, see if she doesn’t know what she’s saying. The few people that come from money stay just because there are so many poor ones to do all their work. These are not poor ones Orly thinks he knows, the ones he sees pushing shopping carts and begging for money. But that doesn’t make them less hungry. You don’t need to see them living squeezed together on top of each other, amontonados like the puppy dogs they keep at the pound, but at least there somebody cares and they give them something to eat before they put them to sleep. The only reason they haven’t stolen the dog is that La Bronca would make picadillo out of them and have them for lunch there in the shade. Los mendigos. Infelices. For that reason Nina put the padlock on the door and tied La Bronca to one of the foundation blocks, where she just waits there under the house. The chain looks short, but it always turns out to be a little longer than people think.