Young Eduardo had no conceptualization of danger. His young mother Esperanza never rushed to his side if he shrieked, rarely looked up when he screamed her name for attention, and seldom looked his way at the loud sound of a thud, usually of his body or of furniture he climbed over.

He would choose the highest trees to climb, the steepest alleys to roll down from, and the furthest fruits to reach.

He soon realized the quickest way to get her attention was to be quiet. The little hints of affection he would receive were when he was sitting on the floor collecting things and putting them in order from largest to smallest, branches, funny looking stones, or sticks. He liked aligning those as if he were some kind of explorer or archeologist, as if he were important.

She would ruffle his hair, so quickly he would think he imagined it. She loved him most when he occupied the least space. And as such, loud, belligerent, and brave Eduardo became timid and reserved. 

That change was not abrupt, it happened little by little, in a similar and measured manner as a bright piece of cloth loses its vibrant color the more it is used, washed, rewashed; washing away the more it offers, washing away to better serve.

His mother was the most striking woman not only in this small forgotten town of Texas, but in all the state. He was sure of it. She had large caramel eyes so full of guarded longing that they gave the illusion of dripping, as if they would drop if she opened her pupils wide enough. But that she did not. Her eyes were mostly lowered or distracted; one could not fully occupy their gaze nor see what she was seeing.

She had a downward moon crescent for a mouth. Her attractive brown eyebrows, eyes, and hair were a similar color as House Sparrows that he saw all over Texas. Those inherited features on him were threatening, and he was treated similarly to House Sparrow as they were considered non-native to the area and flocked there in abundance, regarded as pests, garnering little respect.  

It was in fact legal to “humanely” kill those birds as they were considered a nuisance. And there were often new creative ways to get rid of them. Some shot them, or gave them cracked corn, or inserted peppermints on their perch or sound deterrents to scare them. His abuelita explained that the birds could see ultraviolet lights, as the peppermint appeared as smoke. 

Using bird’s magical ability to see ultraviolet against them did not sit well with Eduardo. He liked those birds, and often tried to befriend them by chasing them, not realizing he was scaring them away. 

They never attacked him, despite everyone telling him they were aggressive and hurt humans and other birds. If anything, they seemed afraid of him. As such, his affections often were met with rebuttal, a constant sensation of a mismatch between what he would offer and receive. Until he stopped offering and was incapable of receiving, developing an aversion to affection, to the point where its display became cloying.

With a handful of fond memories and limited prospects, Eduardo’s profound thirst for life slowly turned into little jabs of hunger, manifested solely towards the day at hand. He could see it in his mother’s face though that there was no way to go but back. How far back? He dubiously wondered if it was to a time he had not existed. A child at the time, he did not recognize that meant regretting his birth. As the years passed, he came to understand that it was him, not his father’s absence, nor the small town’s poverty, nor his mother’s impulsive and imprudent decisions- it was him who was to blame for the entrancing, incandescent young Esperanza not reaching her full potential. The shooting star crashed before it started its magnificent rising and the red-handed culprit was the small olive skin boy with stubborn hair and thick brows. 

***

On a rainy summer afternoon, the heat took residence in the colourful chipped walls and lingered around the open windows. It was so densely humid the house, and the surrounding unkept trees stood rigid as if holding their breath, waiting for a breeze to pass by. 

He heard his abuelita and mother fighting as his mother tossed her clothes in a bag, their words short with menace, laced with something heavier. It sounded like reproach but much less powerful, threats rooted in desperation, sentences hurled around with no one catching them, containing them, controlling them. The underlying feeling, he often confused and felt interchangeably with anger, was pure, undaunted sadness – one that could have swallowed them whole once unleashed.

He somehow understood his mother was leaving him, and had decided he was not going to allow her to hug him goodbye.

Those little punishments were his preservation. Having been wounded by those around him, he had slowly become an expert at deflecting the pain and handing it back more bitter.

He went to the store by the river and bought himself Skittles and a bag of potato chips with the change his dad had given him sheepishly the last time he saw him. He invited him over so he could meet his younger half-sister who stood there staring up at him dumbfounded, the little yellow ribbon in her hair, swaying. 

As an afterthought, he asked the store owner for a pack of beer, trying his luck, and to his surprise, she stared up at him and then quickly looked away, giving him a dismissive shrug with her beer. His shy voice, body language, and young age did not match his size, but no one in this town really cared to protect his childhood. He did not manifest innocence the way they perceived it, smaller or lighter-skinned.

He had never seen any of the beaches on the Texas Gulf Coast, or even outside of his town, so he took a bus with his leftover change, drunk on disorienting sadness. He looked out at the sunset from the window and made it there by nighttime. 

He spent his night by the water, drinking his beers and eating his snacks. The beautiful scenery around him only made him more aware of his sorrow. Throwing rocks in the water and watching them disappear, he suddenly had worries plowing at him urgently, with a severity that overwhelmed and startled him: Where was his mother going? What will happen to her?

He told himself she will manage, as he thought of her tiny hands grabbing her bags and going away. He did not feel anger towards her for leaving him behind, and his last thought as he passed out by the river from heat, beers, and exhaustion, was whether he could do the same.

***

When Eduardo turned 16, he left school and started working two jobs, one at a Peruvian restaurant during the day, and the other at a bar in the city at night. He saw no point in finishing high school and had to take care of his abuelita who could no longer work. After paying the rent, bills, and her medication he was left with not one extra penny in his pocket. He had decided that when the day comes and Luz leaves this earth, he too will leave this town and never come back. He had his mother’s profound restlessness and tried to emulate both his parents’ selfishness. Indeed, he often fantasized of the day he could give away that small green house and leave, completely alone and unrestricted with no destination or plan. But the fantasy did little to appease him.

He was tall and stoic, his timidity and learned constraint perceived as mysteriousness, and he had caught the attention of the prettiest co-worker at the restaurant and the sophisticated city women that went to the bar.

When work was slowing down, and his coworkers would try to bond with him, he would occupy himself organizing cups and plates, from largest to smallest, or however made sense to him in the moment. 

Tuesday afternoons were his time off. His abuelita knowing he will be home would prepare the most elaborate meals her health and funds would allow her to. She would make a large pot of stew and let it cook very slowly. She would cut up the ingredients meticulously, sometimes even made a pie as she waited for the meal to cook. Her best friend Mrs. Jimenez joined and helped her, though Luz would never admit she needed the assistance. Sometimes, when he could not sleep despite the exhaustion, he just sat in the kitchen and watched them mindlessly. 

Other times, he engaged with them. He would keep insisting Luz cooked the meat tender, as he knew she could not bite it otherwise, her remaining teeth were weak, but she asserted he never liked it that way.

As she and Mrs. Jimenez talked, she gave Eduardo lemonade with some ginger, just like he liked it.

Mrs. Jimenez was full-bodied and wrapped an apron around her that had lemons all over it, and she would lift the apron and wipe her forehead from the heat emanating from the pot. She was almost as old as Luz, but healthier. Luz was very thin, her purple nightgown hanging on her body, and she wrapped a small bandana or headband – he was unsure – around her hair to relieve the heat.

A lot of her teeth had fallen out, but she was not self-cautious about it, laughing and smiling widely at Mrs. Jimenez’s stories instead.

He had never seen her as relaxed as she had been the last few years. Mrs. Jimenez and abuelita had worked their whole lives serving at their jobs and home and had taken good care of their children and grandchildren. They have been the bedrock of their nuclear and extended families for generations. 

Now when they walked on the street others moved away respectfully. They were given the cleanest meat at the butchers’ and the best seats on the bus. Their age protected them from harassment and their reputation granted them respect from the whole town. They worked so tirelessly and built the community and therefore earned their chance to rest.

The large price they paid for basic comfort and relief was not lost on Eduardo and it filled him with self-loathing. He could not then identify and confront the bigger structures of oppression that limited his abuelita to fifty years of hard labor and nothing to show for it. 

Her unabashed happiness at making him a pie and her enjoyment of the worn-out green house where they were suffering from unbearable heat almost made him resentful of her. He did not know where to direct his feelings, he just felt very small, and every time she gave him affection, he felt himself shrinking further, but he could not disappear into himself.  

In those moments, he would opt to profoundly focus on their conversations, as if it were gospel or sermon. Escaping his mind, he watched as Luz smacked her lips to determine if the food required more spices, Mrs. Jimenez disagreeing. They both had high standards that befuddled him. Standards on how clothes must be washed, how the food was to be made, how social interactions and obligations must go. That time of them coming together was the time they betrayed themselves. They gossiped, indulged, and let go of their inhibitions and laughed lighter and louder than he had ever heard them.