Do They Know I'm Running

It was one way she teased him, mispronouncing his name.

“Roque,” he corrected, his part of the bit. “Rhymes with O.J.”

“Yes. How sad for you.”

He lowered his head, touched his brow to hers. “I love you.”

She turned her face away. “I told you-”

“I mean it.”

“What difference does it make what you mean?” Like that, the mood turned, as it did on occasion. Too often, actually, and more and more of late. “How many times-”

“Fine. Okay.”

He pulled away and gathered his clothes from the floor, threw on his sweatshirt, stood up to tug on his jeans, sat back down to lace his high-tops. You’re acting your age, he thought, unable to stop himself, at the same time wondering if he really did mean it: I love you. Maybe he was just raising the stakes, he wasn’t sure.

To his back, a whisper: “Roque?”

He wanted her to reach out, touch him, say it: I love you too. Or just: I’m sorry. But neither the caress nor the words came. He launched up and crossed the room, kicking several tea candles across the floor like little tin pucks.

Wood-plank shelves faced each other down the dark hallway, stacked with unfired pots, bowls, vases: Mariko Detwiler, Fine Ceramics. The clay smelled cold and damp and it made him think of fresh graves and with that another song lyric teased its way up from memory: The house is dark and my thoughts are cold.

He thumped down the porch steps, the fog cool on his skin, the air dank from the nearby wetlands. Lingering beneath the chinaberry tree in the dark front yard, he watched as the hall light came on and her silhouette materialized in the doorway. Timidly he ventured a farewell wave. She did not wave back.

CINCHING THE HOOD OF HIS SWEATSHIRT TIGHT, HE BEGAN TO RUN. Craftsman bungalows lined the block, some tricked out like minor museums, others sagging with neglect. At the bottom of the hill he skirted a thicket of blood-red madrone and turned onto the river road where he had the gravel berm to himself, dodging waist-high thistle. The solitude gave him space to think.

He knew what the chambrosos would say, it was all because he was an orphan-the sloppy lust for cougar poon, the pissy sulk upon leaving, even the musical gunslinger ego bit to soothe his pride. And sure, from as early as he could remember he’d sensed an absence at the center of things. Her name was Graciela, she came to the States a Salvadoran refugee, pregnant with her first child, a boy. Three years later she was dead, a massive hemorrhage within hours of delivering her second son. And so there they were, Godofredo and Roque, two American brothers, a toddler and an infant-different fathers, both absent; same mother, now dead.

They got taken in by their spinster aunt, Lucha, also a refugee. Roque knew zip about his old man and what he knew of his mother came from a handful of faded snapshots and Tia Lucha’s tales, not all of them kind. He came to think of his mother the way some people regard an obscure and troubling saint. Mi madre descabellada, the unholy martyr.

As for Godo, he’d never forgotten what it was like: three years old, slow to English, wary of strangers, possessive of his mother who one day went to the hospital and never came back-and for what? Some little shit weasel of a brother.

THE SIGN AT THE STREET READ “HUNTINGTON VILLAGE,” THOUGH NO one could tell you who Huntington was: a trailer park, home to several dozen Salvadoran families, as well as Hondurans, Guatemaltecos, the inescapable Mexicans, even a few Pacific Islanders. The streets were gravel and the shade sparse, no laundry hut, no playground, no management on the premises. Here and there, a brave patch of grass. He lived in a single-wide with Godo and Tia Lucha and Tio Faustino, his aunt’s marido. She was no longer a spinster.

It was temporary, their living here, so Tia said, just until she and Tio Faustino could reestablish some credit. It wasn’t really their fault, of course, losing the house-a crooked mortgage broker, a Mexican no less, had slipped an extra loan into escrow, more than a hundred Latino victims in the scam. It would take years and lawyers and more money thrown to the wind before any of that resolved. Meanwhile they lived as best they could, crammed into six hundred square feet, Tia and Tio, Roque and Godo.

Passing the gravel bed near the gate that served as parking, Roque noticed that Tio Faustino’s rig was gone. That meant it was already four-Tio had left for the Port of Oakland, to get in the queue for container pickup. Roque redoubled his pace until he could make out the random tinny carillon of Tia Lucha’s wind chime swinging from the doorstep awning.

Pulling up outside the trailer, he tugged his key from his jean pocket and slipped it in the lock, opening the door as quietly as he could, only to find his aunt waiting in the kitchenette, sitting at the table in her plaid robe, sipping Nescafe.

“You’re up already,” he said clumsily.

She responded using Spanish, peering over the edge of her cup.-Is it your turn to be the problem around here? Her eyes were sad and proud and blasted from exhaustion, her hair lying tangled across her birdlike shoulders. Her face was narrow and dark, weathered, an indigena face; shortly she would slather on pancake to lighten its complexion in preparation for a day at the cash register.

Roque went to the fridge, saw a can of guava nectar and another of 7UP, his weakness, picked the latter and popped the lid, all to avoid an answer.

– I don’t expect you to be a virgin. Your mother named you for a poet, it’s your privilege to act like an idiot. You’re using protection, yes? Please tell me that much.

“It’s not your problem,” he replied in English, a way to assert his distance. It was one of those ironies, how the older ones praised the new country but stuck to the old country’s tongue.

– Not today, but when the baby arrives and you have no clue if it’s really yours?

“It’s not an issue, okay?”

She cocked her head, studying him.-You’re telling me she’s a boy?

He rolled his eyes, put down his can and ambled over to the table. Agony aunt, he thought. He’d read the phrase in a book recently and thought instantly of Tia Lucha. Leaning down, he kissed her graying black hair, the texture of stitching thread, a smell like almonds, some dollar-a-bottle shampoo.

He switched to Spanish.-We’ll pretend you never said that.

On the shelf behind her, Salvadoran sorpresas, little clay tableaus made in Ilobasco, shared space with skeletal Day of the Dead figurines. He’d often celebrated El Dia de los Muertos with her, it was why he’d never felt singled out for misery despite his mother’s death. He learned not to take it personally. Sorrow was inescapable, a condition, not a punishment.

– We’ll pretend because it’s not true, or because you’re ashamed?

– Don’t make me angry, Tia.

– So it’s a girl.

– A woman.

– And she’s not pregnant.

– She can’t get pregnant.

Tia Lucha studied him like he was suggesting something impossible, or infernal.-She told you that?

– Can we change the subject?

– Oh Roque, don’t be a fool, women lie, especially about that.

– Tia…

– And then they come and tell you, “I can’t believe it, it’s a miracle, a blessing from God.” How old is this woman?

Roque turned to head back toward his brother’s bedroom.-I’ll check in on Godo.

She closed her eyes and rubbed the lids.-Don’t wake him, please.

Acidly, Roque thought: Godo asleep? Now that would be a miracle.

He sometimes wondered if being parentless wasn’t a blessing in disguise. It gave him a kind of freedom from the usual attachments that seemed to hold others back. Life would be more fluid for him because love and desire and ambition would be a question of choice, not obligation. And yet, if that were true, how would he keep from