Texas was dead: to begin with… at least for Jerry.
“As soon as I turn eighteen, I’m outta this shit bowl!”
He didn’t actually move until he was nineteen because it always took him a year to follow through on something, but he did get the hell outta Dodge like he said he would.
“And just in the nick of time!” he assured his neighbor Chofo on moving day as he loaded boxes of crap into his beige 1979 Chevy Citation. “You move to LA in your teens when it’s cool,” he continued, “not in your twenties when you’re old and washed up.”
Jerry was young and stupid, but his callow rationale did ring true about one thing: nineteen is the last of the teenage years. That’s an absolute truth. The loss of innocence is a relative truth, and not age-specific the way Jerry surmised, but again, he was not at the height of his intellectual powers. He was moderately book smart, earning mediocre grades through high school with the occasional high marks in English for his ability to compose passable fiction from time to time, but when it came to being street smart, Jerry was none too savvy.
“That’s why I’m leaving: to get savvy,” he claimed, as if he was responding to this narration, but the real motivation was to get even with his family. Jerry was always considered the black sheep of the Pachecos: a white sheep in a brown herd that called him coco behind his back because he pulled A’s in English and C’s in Spanish, and preferred to hang out with other white sheep named Kyle and Brady instead of his own cousins Lalo and Manolo. Jerry was aware of the flock’s dismissal of him as a pocho and instead of allowing that to persuade him to embrace his own culture and learn Spanish, he let it fuel his desire to leave, so that he could return one day and rub their noses in all of his coconut sheep glory.
It will only take a few years to execute my simple plan of success-revenge, scribbled Jerry in his journal, with only five easy steps.
Step I: move to L.A.
Step II: get a sweet apartment in Hollywood
Step III: become a rich and famous screenplay writer
Step IV: buy a Ferrari and a beach house in Malibu like Barbie
Step V: return to Texas and get my ass kissed by my brother, my aunts and uncles and all my rotten cousins
None of those mentioned had shown up for Jerry’s farewell. The only people in attendance were his father Eduardo, his mother Estefanía, and Chofo.
“Where’s the rest of the Pacheco clan?” asked Chofo.
“I never cared for that surname. Maybe I’ll change it when I get to California.”
“Pacheco?”
“Too close to pachuco. Sounds barrio.”
“My dad was a pachuco. He says it was a term the Spaniards used to describe Mexican immigrants before it was appropriated by Mexican-American zoot suiters from the 30’s and 40’s.”
“Doesn’t it mean cholo?”
“Cholo meant mutt and was used to describe half-breeds but yeah, it evolved into a modern slang term for juvenile delinquents of the Latino persuasion.”
“Exactly. Too barrio.”
“What are you gonna change your name to?”
“I’m thinking Stone.”
“Gerardo Stone.”
“Jerry Stone,” he corrected. “It’s more sophisticated.”
“Gerardo!” yelled his mother from the front porch, letting the screen door slam behind her.
“What?!”
“Are you gonna take your stuffed animals or you want me to donate them to the daycare center?”
“They’re staying in the attic!”
“Even Gonga?!”
Sitting in the front seat was Gonga, a small, plush gorilla doll whose thumbs you could insert into his mouth to simulate thumb-sucking.
“Gonga’s coming with me!”
Eduardo came out and also let the screen door slam as he joined Estefanía on the porch. He held an inverted broom in his right hand and the two stood side-by-side and stared in different directions with no expression, like they were frozen in time. “Look at those two,” Jerry told Chofo. “They look like a Chicano version of that painting with the farmer and the pitch fork.”
“American Gothic?”
“More like Mexican Gothic” Jerry snickered. “I can’t believe I grew up here.”
“Believe it, hombre, and don’t forget it. This is your home… tu barrio.”
“Exactly, too barrio!”
“Wait ’til you get to LA,” Chofo laughed. “It’s just like Mexico, too!”
Jerry shut the Citation trunk. “Good one, Chofo.”
Jerry was only in La-La-Land for two weeks and he was already shitting cinder blocks. The traffic, the pollution, the Mexicans! He almost went back to Texas with his tail between his legs, but that early retreat would have made him the laughingstock of El Paso County.
I can’t give them the satisfaction. I already completed the first step of getting here, which was the hardest part. The next steps are a breeze: get an apartment in Hollywood and become a famous screenplay writer!
For the next five years, Jerry rented a low-income apartment in Pico Rivera and worked as a janitor at an office building. It was a secluded life with no roommates, no girlfriend, no companions, no relatives in the entire state of California, and no complaints from Jerry, who had come to appreciate the solitude over time. For one, it allowed him to focus on his writing, and secondly, it kept him on the straight and narrow. Half-a-decade before, Jerry had been convinced that moving from a sleepy West Texas town to a vibrant West Coast city known for its decadence and depravity would corrupt his young and impressionable mind. The idea had been planted in his head by the words of some Hollywood publicist he saw in a trashy TV exposé about the dark underbelly of Tinseltown: The City of Angels can poison even the saintliest of ingénues. I witnessed the most innocent bible belt transplant go from prayer beads to anal beads in a matter of weeks.”
Despite the ridiculous warning, Jerry’s small town values had not been perverted by big city life. There was no longer any fear of running with the wrong crowd because, quite frankly, there was no crowd. Jerry was a loner, and not like an introvert who couldn’t make friends, or an outcast banished to the fringes of society by his peers because he shit his pants at a work function or something humiliating like that. He was just a self-applied, self-sufficient misanthrope.
The custodial industry has been a welcome layover on my road to stardom. Cleaning shitters doesn’t have the sex appeal of the entertainment field that I will one day conquer, so I’m not exposed to the indulgences and the temptations that can bring about the usual moral decay. My beliefs and sexual ethics are still well intact, and should be primed and ready for proper abuse when I eventually make it.
Another year went by and Jerry had yet to complete an entire screenplay. Half-a-dozen years in California and he only had half-a-script to show for it, and not a very good one at that. It was a semi-autobiographical piece called Skinema Live! about movie theater employees who turn their workplace into a strip joint after hours, and much like the person the main character was based upon, the screenplay was dull and aimless. The hero, named Eric, was being written as a lovable rogue, but the real life inspiration was still maintaining his year-round commitment to minimal interaction. For six years now, Jerry had managed to avoid socialization for an entire calendar year like a full-time recluse, but this time, he let the holiday season get the best of him.
This year I experienced the magic of Christmas… that wicked spell of phony yuletide mirth and merriment that creates so much stress and anxiety and pressure to connect socially in the name of Jesus H. Christ that I surrendered to the seasonal generosity of others and agreed to take part in a forced ritual of unrealistic expectations that only served to reaffirm my initial disdain for this wretched time of year.
The invitation came from Jerry’s coworker Moco Alderete (a fellow janitor who lived in Boyle Heights) and Jerry’s intolerance for humanity, along with a recent news story about a drive-by shooting in that area, prompted him to decline the offer immediately. Moco’s face went slack, like he had just been told he only had six weeks to live.
“I only have six weeks to live,” said Moco, as if he was reading along.
“Really?”
“No, but that’s what it feels like.”
Jerry didn’t feel bad for Moco, but watching him almost cry as a result of his rejection made Jerry feel good about himself. “Christmas Eve, huh?”
Moco lit up like a Christmas tree. “Yeah!”
“What are you guys having for dinner?”
“Oh, man, you’ll love it. We’re gonna make a traditional home cooked turkey feast just like the gringos!”
“Okay, Moco. I’ll be there with jingle bells on.”
Jerry couldn’t remember the last time he had enjoyed a traditional turkey dinner. Obviously, Thanksgiving had been skipped every year since moving to LA, but even growing up back home, holiday menus usually included alternative dishes like menudo or tamales or chicken mole.
I used to envy my friends Kyle and Brady because their families had traditional holiday dinners with (as they used to put it) “all the fixings.” White folks have special words and phrases like that during Christmas time. They say things like “Yuletide” and “Noel,” words we never used in the Pacheco household. We just said Christmas. And white folks had holly and mistletoe. We never had that shit growing up, or maybe we did and the adults kept it out of the house because they feared our creepy uncle Tito might abuse it. Another Anglo phrase was “trim the tree.” The first time Kyle came over and saw our bare-ass Christmas tree, he said “let’s trim the tree,” and I was confused because we had a fake tree and I thought he wanted to cut back some of the branches.
–It’s fake, Kyle.
–So?
–So it doesn’t need trimming.
–Just because it’s fake and cheap-looking doesn’t mean it doesn’t get trimmed.
–What part do you think needs trimming?
–All of it, from top to bottom.
–But if we trim the whole tree we won’t have anything left to decorate.
–Exactly. So let’s get started.
–It doesn’t need trimming.
–It’s totally bare.
–I know. And if you trim it s’more it won’t be a tree any more.
–That’s right! It’ll be a Christmas tree! Where are the ornaments?
–The what?
Ornaments. Another Caucasian word. We called them decorations. “Let’s put the decorations!”
It was a cold and wintry Christmas Eve night in Boyle Heights. The temperature was a bracing fifty-eight degrees (but it felt like fifty-five) and Jerry’s entrance at casa de Alderete was met with inviting faces, season’s greetings, and the holiday sounds of 97.9 La Raza. There were several relatives in attendance: four gang-affiliated cousins, three morbidly obese nephews, two crazy aunts, and a partridge in a pear tree! There was also a black man there named Quincy who was crazy enough to be dating crazy aunt number one: Estella.
Moco had an attractive niece named Petra who was older than him by two years, and Jerry was immediately drawn to her. A charm offensive was launched and after a series of empty promises about modeling opportunities he could arrange on her behalf, he managed to get her phone number. The two were inseparable during the cocktail hour and when dinner was called, they sat right next to each other. Moco’s seventy-year-old grandmother Tita—who was pretty much his mother since she raised him, and who was drunk all the time because of it—asked that someone say a few words before dinner since the man who usually did the honors (Uncle Chato) was spending the holiday season in county lockup.
“Police Navidad, Tio Chato!” whooped Moco with visions of laughter that never materialized.
“I got this,” volunteered Chango, one of the cousins. “Whattaya call it… um, shout outs to Rascal, Gofre and his old lady Norma… that puto Freddy and all the babosos down at Hollenbeck Park.”
“Don’t forget Cricket, ay!”
“Oh, yeah… Cricket,” agreed Chango, pouring some beer onto the carpet. “Rest in peace, Lil Cricket.”
The food came out and it was quickly determined that Tita the intoxicated matron had forgotten to thaw the turkey before cooking it, and that the giblets were still inside. The Alderetes quickly tossed the bird in the backyard for the dogs to devour and it was decided that Tita was not to consume any more liquor.
Moco suggested a call to a local Mexican restaurant and within minutes, a contingency plan of tamales and tacos al carbón was set in motion. He dispatched a couple of cousins to go pick up the order and while the others waited for their return, Petra showed Jerry a year-old photo of her daughter sitting on Santa’s lap.
“Daughter?!” squawked Jerry before clearing his throat. “Where is she now?”
“With her dumbass baby daddy. That’s him in the picture.”
“Santa?”
“Yeah, he used to work there every Christmas to help with the child support.”
“He has tattoos on his knuckles that read VATO and LOCO,” observed Jerry.
“I know. Pendejo forgot his Santa gloves that day and they fired his ass.”
Jerry began to rethink his involvement with Petra as he imagined a jealous ex-boyfriend in a Santa suit beating him repeatedly with a VATO-LOCO-VATO-LOCO flurry of alternating punches to the face.
“That reminds me,” said Petra, “we’re going to the mall later tonight so the kids can take a picture with Santa. You’re gonna come, right?”
Jerry glanced past her purple eye shadow and gazed deep into her sultry green eyes, searching his clouded mind for the perfect excuse not to go. “I wouldn’t miss it!” he blurted.
“Food’s here!” screamed the children and the piercing sound was not enough to wake Tita, who had passed out in the master bedroom. Everyone was too hungry to wake la malacopa so they dined without her and ate like the ravenous pack of dogs in the backyard—especially Jerry, who had never had tacos al carbón. His sudden passion for authentic Mexican food sent his table manners flying out the window like an uncooked turkey.
It was clear after dinner that the adults wanted to stay home and keep boozing but the children wouldn’t shut up about Santa, so the grownups put their kids’ needs ahead of their own and agreed to continue drinking on the drive to the mall. Everyone put on their thick coats and scarves and gloves and winter hats in preparation for the brutal cold that awaited them in the fifteen second journey from the front door of the house to the SUV that the entire family was planning to pile into. Jerry visited the master bathroom prior to leaving and while he was washing up, he looked over and saw something that almost made him regurgitate Christmas tacos. It was a scarring image that would later claim the top spot on a list he compiled in his journal entitled My Top Five CAN’T UNSEE Moments:
#1: Tita Alderete sleeps naked 😫
When they got to the mall, the line to see Santa was a country mile long, and the Alderetes were huddled at the very end of it, still shivering from the thirty second blast of winter they had endured between the SUV and the mall entrance. Off in the distance, beyond the river of ear-muffed and stocking-hatted noggins that stretched out before them like the LA River, they could see a giant Christmas tree, and at the foot of that tree, at the mouth of that river, they could just make out a pair of jumbo candy canes resting atop the snow-covered façade of Santa’s Workshop.
“This line is gonna move slower than Christmas,” said Quincy, and usually Jerry would agree and pile on, but that night, he didn’t seem to register any of the surrounding nonsense that he usually railed against, completely forgetting that standing in a queue involved the two things he hated most in life: people and waiting.
Society would be much more tolerable if it wasn’t for all the damn people. I have no patience for even the shortest delay caused by the crowds and traffic that go with them. I can be next in line at the post office or on-deck at an ATM, and if the guy in front of me is taking his sweet ass time (aka, is not in a hurried frenzy), then I’ll storm off in a huff like no other huff before it or since.
For Jerry to be standing a-hundred-people-deep in a line at the mall (to see Santa of all things), meant that he had undergone a drastic transformation. Something had stirred inside of him in a brief period that I wish I could tell you had something to do with Christmas; that his heart had grown three times greater like The Grinch Who Stole Christmas but as Jerry once wrote:
That would cause a massive heart attack. What heart metaphor wouldn’t? A broken heart? That’s cardiac arrest. Heart of stone? A stroke. Giving your heart to another? You would drop dead and fumble the handoff. The fact that we even associate this organ with love is absurd. The heart is not the most important organ in our body. It’s the brain. Even the liver is more vital to the human body than the heart. The love phrase should really be I LIVER YOU.
But if we could apply one figure of speech to Jerry’s heart for the sake of this story, then I would say it melted. Jerry’s heart melted faster than Frosty the Snowman inside that greenhouse, but it had nothing to do with Christmas, and everything to do with Petra.
What began as a simple crush quickly escalated into full-blown infatuation, and it was Petra’s unexpected receptiveness to Jerry’s advances that had blinded him to his environs and ultimately convinced him that anything was possible. The guy was already picking out baby names in his head, or rather, recalling the ones he had previously selected in case of accidental fatherhood:
My first child’s name will be Roman for a boy and Romana for a girl, and not because of Roman History or anything, but because of the Roman candle I lit when I was ten years old that backfired into my crotch and nearly incinerated my genitals. My kid’s name will serve as a constant reminder that you can’t keep a good man and his manhood down.
That scrotal trauma had always put the doubt of fatherhood in Jerry’s mind but meeting Petra had changed all of that, and he could see himself married to her, raising the kids Atheist, and maintaining a love as endless as that eternal line to see Santa. That’s a simile Old Jerry would’ve deployed, but New Jerry didn’t feel that way. New Jerry was having such a good time with the future Mrs. Petra Stone that he lost all sense of time. Thirty minutes felt like three minutes, and before he knew it, they could see the entrance to Santa’s Workshop. The Big Man himself was seated on a couch just beyond the doorway, right in front of the giant Christmas tree, and when they caught their first glimpse of the white-bearded black man who was dressed up as Old Saint Nick, they reacted with a shared look of shock and confusion.
“Trip out,” said Chango. “Santa’s a negro, foo’!”
“You didn’t know?” barked Quincy.
“He got the white beard and e’rything.”
“Black folks grow old, too!” defended Quincy.
That’s when Jerry opened his big mouth. “Yeah, but a black Kris Kringle? Come on, that’s as plausible as a black Jesus.”
Quincy whipped his head around so quickly he almost injured his neck. “What?!” Even some of the Alderetes looked at Jerry with disbelief.
“Look,” began Jerry, “I’m not trying to piss on anybody’s parade, but everybody knows there’s no such thing as Santa Claus, let alone Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter what color they are, they’re both mythological figures created to keep the knuckleheads in line.”
Members of the Alderete family exchanged surprised glances. They were expecting to hear an ethnocentric diatribe fueled by bigotry, but when they heard Jerry’s blasphemy instead, they seemed oddly relieved. The children, however, were devastated. They were now living in a world without Santa Claus (and Jesus Christ for that matter), and some of them cried in their mothers’ arms.
“We still have the Easter Bunny, right?” whimpered one child.
“Nah, that’s all bullshit, too,” said Jerry and Quincy punched him in the gut with so much force that it dropped him to his knees.
Jerry knelt there momentarily, clutching his belly and gasping for air like he’d been shot, then fell to his side in a muffled thud because of his big puffy jacket. The line to Santa kept moving and people stepped over Jerry to advance, including Petra, who told him to lose her phone number, unless any good modeling gigs became available.
As he lay there on the cold shopping mall floor in the fetal position, Jerry wondered if he would be invited back to the Alderete’s the following Christmas. Probably not he thought, and he flashbacked to a phone call he had received earlier that summer when he was sitting in the courtyard of his apartment complex checking out his new iPhone 6, which was really just an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 1 glued together.
“Hello?”
“Happy birthday, mijo!” proclaimed his mother Estefanía.
“Hi, mom. Thanks for calling.”
“What are you doing today on your special day?”
“Just hanging out.”
A few members of the Farhadian family, Jerry’s neighbors in apartment 115, poured out into the courtyard in a lively discussion.
“¡Híjole! What’s all that angry yelling?” yelled Estefanía.
“Those are my neighbors.”
“¿Mejicanos?“
“Armenians.”
“Our minions? You did a cult, o qué?”
“Not our minions. ArmEEnians.”
“¿Que chingados es eso?”
“People from Armenia.”
“¡Híjole! What’s all those crazy sounds now?”
“That’s Armenian music. It’s called Rabiz.”
“Rabies?! I don’t like it. I think it’s time for you to come back home where you belong.”
“This is where I belong.”
Estefanía cursed in Spanish and Jerry’s father Eduardo got on the phone. “‘¡’Ey, no seas pendejo, cabron! You listen to your mama!”
“Hi, dad.”
“She says you did a cult. ¿Por qué?“
“I’m not in a cult.”
“I knew something like this would happen. Why can’t you be more like your sister?”
“Because I don’t have a sister?”
“That’s what you think.”
“Can you put mom back on, please?”
For the next ten seconds, Jerry heard his parents struggling with the handoff. At one point they dropped the phone, then argued and wrestled with one another before Estefanía finally got back on. “What time are you gonna be here? I’ll make enchiladas.”
“I’m not coming home, mom.”
“Okay, fine. Stay with your crazy neighbors and enjoy your cochinadas!“
She hung up on Jerry but he thought it was a dropped call. “Damn iPhone.”
Back on the shopping mall floor, Jerry struck up a conversation with the only person that would speak to him: himself, in the form of Gonga.
Look at you, lying there like a speed bump in the Santa line. You’re better off back in Texas with the Pachecos. Granted, they’re getting crazier with every phone call, but at least they’re family and at least they still call after all the dumb shit you’ve said. When you told your cousins “It’s not time for me to learn Spanish; it’s time for you people to learn proper English!” they didn’t knock the wind out of you. They said “you’re dead to us” in Spanish but they never put their hands on you. That’s love right there, and maybe you should to return the favor. You’ve done some growing up since you left and perhaps they have too, so I think it’s time you went back for a visit, even though you have no success to show for it, other than the fact that you can afford round trip airfare.
Jerry began looking for flights and realized early on that his inner Gonga was unaware of the financials. He could not afford to buy a round trip ticket and when he told his parents soon after that he was planning a Christmas homecoming, he thought they might offer to pay for his trip but they didn’t. To alleviate the financial burden, Jerry sought the assistance of a coworker whose mother was a flight attendant for a small regional airline. Through this connection, Jerry was able to secure a standby ticket, which was a discounted flight with one guarantee: there are no guarantees. If there was an extra seat on the plane, Jerry was home free; but if the flight was full, he would be wait-listed once again on the next available flight, and because of the hectic holiday season, this process could go on all night: flight after flight, bump after bump.
Jerry arrived at LAX on Christmas Eve praying for some stranger’s canceled reservation, but his chances didn’t look good. Massive crowds of travelers arriving and departing like army ants in a colony put a damper on his optimism, and he displayed very little confidence when he stepped up to the boarding counter and handed his ticket to an agent named Regina.
“One standby,” she acknowledged with depleted energy. “You’ll be the last to board.” She punched his ticket into the computer and returned it without a smile. “Unless you get bumped.”
Flight 189 was leaving LA in an hour, at 2:00 p.m., and landing in Denver at 3:15 p.m. After a short layover, the plane would continue onward and land in El Paso at 6:00 p.m., which meant that Jerry needed two Christmas miracles to reach his final destination. Slim chance and a fat chance he predicted in equal measure. It wasn’t until the voice over the loudspeaker called for the initial boarding of Group A that he was even able to find a seat in the crowded waiting area. How am I going to secure a seat on Flight 189 when I can barely find a seat at Gate 23?
The next cattle call was for Group B, then Group C, the final herd. Once the last bovine was on board, Regina called Jerry to the counter and he was expecting to get an X branded on his ass like a rejected cow but instead, she handed him a boarding pass.
“Hallelujah!” he rejoiced. “There’s a Santa after all!”
“Oh, now he’s a believer.” she muttered to herself, as if she had been there the previous year, when he was writhing on the cold, hard tiles of the shopping mall floor.
Flight 189 was on schedule when it touched down in Denver, and the landing was soon followed by the usual din of passengers grabbing their belongings and preparing to deplane. “For those of you continuing on to El Paso,” announced Gayle the flight attendant, “please remain seated until all current passengers have disembarked and connecting passengers have boarded the aircraft. Thank you.”
Jerry looked out the window and watched a couple of baggage handlers at work. The first guy performed his duties with professional courtesy but the second guy was like a gorilla hurling luggage onto the trailer cart with reckless abandon. Suitcases spilled onto the tarmac and when the first guy started cleaning up the mess, it reminded Jerry of the sibling dynamics of his childhood.
I was the youngest of two boys, and by all accounts, I should have been the golden child. I was the smart one, the mature one, the gentle one, but I was not the favorite. That title belonged to Domingo, which never made sense to me because he was a brutish, loafing idiot. Firstborn children are usually responsible leaders that serve as role models for their siblings, but not Domingo. He was a ne’er do well, and whenever I reported his bad behavior to my parents, they would either defend him, accuse me of being a tattle-tale, or worst of all, deflect.
–“What I wanna know is why do you let your little friends call you Jerry?” inquired his mother. “Your name is Gerardo.”
–“They can’t pronounce it.”
–“Then don’t hang out with those gringos. You should have amigos Mejicanos like your brother. They call him Domingo como un hombre, not Dommy.”
–“They should call him Dommy ‘cause he’s a big dummy.”
–“That’s your brother.”
–“He’s a maniac. The guy plays duck-duck-goose with a hammer.”
–”He’s just a kid.”
–“So am I!”
That was always their defense for Domingo: “He’s just a kid.” When he went to jail for the first time at 15: “He’s just a kid.” When he became a father at 17: “He’s just a kid with a kid.” When he spent his 20’s living at home, fathering two more kids, racking up four more arrests, and holding down zero jobs: “He’s our kid, and he can stay here as long as he wants.” And Domingo did stay—well into his 30’s.
Jerry’s journaling was halted by a large man plopping into the seat next to him. Flight 189 had suddenly filled up with incoming passengers.
“We have a sold out flight,” informed Gayle. “Quickly select a seat and please remain seated.”
A family of three brought up the rear: a man named Chuck, his wife Lori, and their infant son Brandon.
“So much for sitting together,” said Lori.
“Yeah,” agreed Chuck. “Full capacity.” They moved down the aisle, searching for vacant seats. “There’s one, honey,” he pointed and Lori climbed into the empty seat with Brandon.
Jerry watched with great interest as Chuck continued toward the rear, looking for another vacancy. “Is that seat taken?” Chuck asked a man sitting next to an empty seat.
“Yeah, I think he’s in the can.”
Chuck looked around desperately until Gayle intervened. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid there are no more seats available.”
“What happens now?”
“Don’t worry, there’s a standby we can bump.”
Gayle led Chuck toward the front of the plane and Jerry released a defeated sigh. Seven years…. what’s one more day?
Moments later, Jerry was walking back toward the airport terminal with his backpack on. He was about halfway up the jet tunnel when Chuck ran up from behind and gave him a hearty handshake. “Thanks again.” Chuck let go and Jerry found a newly-acquired fifty-dollar bill in his hand.
“What’s this?”
“It’s yours,” hollered Chuck, retreating. “Merry Christmas!”
Jerry walked back to the gate. When he reached the ticket counter he asked the agent What’s there to do in Denver for fifty bucks? but the conversation was cut short when Gayle busted through the jetway door. “Come back! We found a seat for you!”
The two ran back down the tunnel. “We thought there was a guy in the restroom but it was an empty seat!” explained Gayle. As soon as Jerry stepped back onto the crowded plane, he was greeted with mild applause. He returned an awkward wave and headed toward the rear of the plane. On his way, he noticed Chuck looking on with a wide grin and a big thumbs-up. He held out his palm, expecting his fifty bucks back, but Jerry just kept on walking. Chuck’s grin dissolved and his eyes followed Jerry to his aisle seat in the back.
They didn’t lock eyes again until mid flight. Jerry was fluffing his pillow and positioning himself for a nap when Chuck looked back and waved at him with a smile. Jerry nodded back, closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep, leaving Chuck to shrink back into his seat like a sunflower dying in time lapse photography.
Jerry strutted through El Paso International Airport like a man who couldn’t lose. On the escalator ride to the lower level, he saw his friends and family at the bottom under a large banner that read “WELCOME HOME, JERRY! WE MISSED YOU!” As soon as he stepped off the escalator, they mobbed like a celebrity.
When Jerry and his welcoming committee got outside, a driver opened the door to a stretch limousine and escorted everybody into the vehicle. The limo sped down the I-10, passed a seasonal light display on the side of The Franklins known as The Star on the Mountain.
The limo pulled up to the Pacheco residence and Jerry stepped out to find his immediate family gathered at the front door. Blinking Christmas lights on the roof read “JERRY CHRISTMAS!” and he was hoisted onto the shoulders of his–
–“We’re getting ready to land,” interrupted Gayle. “Please put your seat belt on and secure your tray table.”
Jerry sat up and wiped the drool from his tray table and mouth. He was embarrassed by the slobber, like the time he fell asleep during a massage and drooled so heavily face-down in the cradle that it formed a puddle on the floor. The masseur came around to rub Jerry’s neck and he slipped on the spit and smashed into the adjacent table where the candles and the incense were burning. The masseur was rubbing his ankle when Jerry woke up in a foul mood. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I think I spilled some oil down here and almost broke my ankle.”
“Can we get back to my massage, please?”
“Sure thing,” he groaned.
Flight 189 landed and Jerry shuffled through the quiet airport. There was no homecoming celebration at the escalators and when he walked outside, there was no limo waiting to spirit him away.
Across the street, he saw Chuck and his family being greeted by loved ones, and he imagined the chit chat as they hugged and exchanged pleasantries. Has the turkey been stuffed? Christmas tree trimmed? Mistletoe hung? He pictured them sitting around a roaring fireplace later that evening, sipping on eggnog and singing along to Christmas carols by Andy Williams. With the correct lyrics he thought, not like his family, who he always corrected:
Bells on bobcats ring!
Bobcats?
Bobsleds?
Bobtails!
Ha! That’s not even a word!
Eventually Chuck and his family sauntered off and disappeared into the parking lot elevators. Jerry lingered on the moment a few beats more before calling his own family. The number to his parents’ house was the only one he had so when nobody answered, he figured they were en route. He called three more times within the hour and by 7:30, he was in the backseat of a cab zipping down the I-10 past the Star of the Mountain.
By the time the taxi dropped him off at the grungy house he grew up in, Jerry had tried the number three more times. He was expecting an empty home or a sign that read “No Room in the Inn,” but there they were, framed in the living room window: his parents, Domingo, his aunt and uncle Manina and Adan (aka Don-Don) and their two sons Lalo and Manolo; they were all milling around the Christmas tree like they didn’t have someplace to be.
Jerry marched across the dead lawn and took his frustration out on the front door, banging on it as many times as he had phoned before letting the screen door slam.
His parents looked equally annoyed when they answered the door but their mood turned to jubilation when they saw Jerry standing on the front porch. Their reaction prompted the others to come to the door and greet Jerry, except Domingo, who scurried to the kitchen and reconnected the phone so no one would suspect that he was the one who had unplugged it earlier in the evening.
“Why didn’t you call us to come pick you up?” wondered Estefanía.
“I did call,” snapped Jerry. “Nobody answered.”
“We never heard the phone ring.”
“What about the itinerary I sent you? I waited over an hour.”
“Lo siento, mi’jo,” she said, “we lost track of time.”
“Yeah, we’ve been working on the lights!” justified Eduardo. “About to light everything so you’re just in time!”
Jerry exchanged a few awkward handshakes with his other family members before walking into the living room where Domingo was collecting empty ornament boxes.
“Your brother’s here, Domingo,” beamed Estefanía.
Domingo gave Jerry a quick look and resumed cleaning.
“Time for the Christmas lights!” declared Eduardo. “Listo, Domingo?”
“Listo.”
“Okay, todos afuera! Bring your cameras!”
Everyone congregated outside to view the Christmas lights, except Jerry and Domingo, who stayed in the living room. Domingo flipped the switch and the sparse Christmas tree and outdoor lights came on in unspectacular fashion.
Jerry acknowledged the weak light show, then offered his older brother a half-hearted “Merry Christmas.”
Domingo continued piling boxes.
“I said Merry Christmas, asshole!”
Outside, the Pachecos were documenting the light show with their shitty mobile phones. They felt blessed despite the modest display, and their hearts were filled with peace and joy until they saw the Christmas tree swaying back and forth as a result of Jerry and Domingo tussling inside.
“¡Cabrones!” shouted Eduardo. “The tree! The tree!”
The Pachecos ran back in and found the brothers wrestling so violently that they sent the Christmas tree crashing to the floor, which tripped a fuse and rendered the house pitch-black. The fracas continued in the darkness with the sounds of breaking glass and shrieking.
“José Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” blasted on the stereo when the power came back on. Domingo was outside with Lalo, cooling off, and Jerry was at the dining table with the others, holding a cold beer to a bump on his forehead.
“¡Al fin!” exclaimed Estefanía. “Now I can see who I’m yelling at.”
“Go yell at Domingo,” Jerry whined. “He started it.”
“You sound like a little kid.”
“He’s the eternal child. I’m just stooping down to his level.”
Eduardo returned from restoring the power. “¿Que dices, Gerardo?”
“He’s never gonna grow up, dad.”
“Domingo’s grownup,” he defended. “He has three kids.”
“Yeah,” scoffed Jerry, “with three different moms.”
“Cuantos más, mejor,” sang Estefanía while Eduardo translated, “The more the merrier!”
“It’s not quantity, people, it’s quality.”
“It’s family,” insisted Estefanía, and Jerry fired back, “It’s failure.”
“¿O sí, cabron?” huffed Eduardo. “And what’s your big success?”
“I grew up! I moved out! You guys didn’t give him that opportunity because you coddled him.”
Eduardo leaned in with one ear, “¿Como?”
“You cleaned up after him. You waited on him hand and foot and now he’s incapable of self-dependence.”
“You sound like a gringo,” interjected Manina.
“They cut off his wings and now he can’t fly. Is that better?”
Manina shrugged her approval and Jerry readdressed his parents. “He can’t leave the nest, and now his failures are your failures so you enable him out of guilt, unlike me. I did my chores. I cooked for myself, got good grades and stayed out of trouble and what did I get in return? Bupkis. He gets a lifetime supply of Get Out of Jail Free cards and I can’t even get a ride home from the airport.”
“¡Ay, qué dramático!” dismissed Estefanía.
“Seriously, I come back after seven years and I’m still persona non grata!”
Adan shook his head. “And still can’t speak Spanish.”
“It’s Latin, Don-Don.”
“And stuck up todavía,” sneered Manina.
“Hey, I might be smarter and more sophisticated than you guys but I’m not stuck up.”
Manina rolled her eyes.
“It’s true. In your rolling eyes I’m a traitor because I chose assimilation over cultural embracement but I was never arrogant about it.”
“You told Abuelita Paula to go back to Mexico,” Manolo contradicted.
“Yeah, but she couldn’t hear me, and wouldn’t understand me if she could.”
“You still introduce yourself as European?” asked Lalo.
“Hey, we’re mestizos.”
“You pretended to have amnesia one time so you wouldn’t remember us,” said Domingo, entering the room.
“Really? I don’t recall that.”
Domingo grabbed a beer out of the fridge. “I hope you get Old Timer’s for real so all of your wildest dreams will come true.”
“Nah, you guys are alright,” Jerry assured him, but Domingo didn’t relent, “You’ll still get it.”
“Maybe,” allowed Jerry, “but Alzheimer’s is for old timers, as you put it, so we still have time together before that happens. In the meantime, have a seat. We’ll have a slap competition.”
“¡Basta!” cried Estefanía. “I don’t want any more tonterías. Cristo wasn’t born so we could all fight on his birthday.”
“Should we save it for Easter when he came back from the dead?” joked Jerry. “Like Pet Sematary?”
Adan shook his head again. “Y todavía con la blasfemia.”
“Have fun in hell,” added Manina.
Jerry chortled. “You think Christmas is about Christianity in this pagan country? It’s about shopping, putting up twinkly lights and arguing at the dinner table like good Americans. That’s the real tradition, and maybe that was God’s plan: thou shalt bicker with relatives. Work out your differences in December, right the wrongs by January, and do it all over again the following year like an annual confession.”
A few seconds of dead silence followed before Jerry added, “I guess I’m not saying grace later.”
“You’re staying for dinner?” scowled Manina.
“Three days, Aunt ‘Nina. Didn’t mean to spoil your Christmas, but yes, I’m home for the holidays!”
“Where are you staying?”
“Here. I’m staying here.”
“I thought you always had gringo friends on the west side,” said Adan. “You don’t wanna stay with them?”
“Blood is thicker than water, Don-Don. Yeah, it’s messier and harder to clean up, but it’s worth it, right?”
Adan shook his head no.
“Also, they don’t live here anymore.”
Everyone groaned and Jerry stood up. “Look, I know I’m an asshole, and I say asshole things but it’s only for three days. We can let bygones be bygones and be a family for three days, can’t we?“
Silence.
“Great! Then let’s deck the halls with bras of Holly as Lalo used to say. We’ll start with the tree!”
Jerry left the room and no one followed. They just stared blankly at each other in his absence.
Chofo parked in his driveway across the street and peered over at the Pacheco residence. He saw Jerry through the living room window, looking all sad and pathetic hanging ornaments on the Christmas tree by himself. He hadn’t heard much about Jerry since he left, except that he had joined a cult, and he thought he might go over and join him, but then Estefanía entered the frame. Eduardo joined them soon after, and then one-by-one, the others followed, including Domingo. The whole family was there, putting the decorations. This put a smile on Jerry’s face, and Chofo, almost as if he knew the story was coming to an end, said, “Dios nos bendiga… a todos.”