The Book of Unknown Americans(44)

But as soon as she did, my dad threw her wrists back at her in disgust.

“I don’t know how many times …,” he muttered, shaking his head. Then he turned, using his leg to sweep aside the chair, which was on its back on the floor, stepped over the food, and walked out of the kitchen.

The clock on the wall ticked faintly. The glass bottles of vinegar and hot sauce that my mom kept on the shelves inside the refrigerator door rattled. I felt embarrassed for my mom, who sat across from me screwing up her face like she was determined not to cry, but I stayed absolutely silent, waiting to see what would happen next.

Finally my mom said quietly, “Mayor, finish your chicken.”


TWO DAYS LATER, my dad and I learned the news: Tía Gloria was giving us ten thousand dollars. After the heat between my parents died down, my mom blurted out the number during dinner. My dad nearly choked on his food.

“I can’t believe it,” my mom kept saying.

“Well, we’ve probably given her almost as much money over the years,” my dad said once he’d recovered from the shock.

“Ten thousand dollars, Rafa? Come on.”

“We did what we could,” my dad said.

“Of course we did. And now she’s doing the same. It’s just that she can afford to do more. Ten thousand dollars! I can’t believe it.”

It didn’t take my dad quite as long to wrap his head around the idea. The morning the money landed in my parents’ bank account, my dad said, “I think we should buy a car.”

“A what?” my mom sputtered as she snapped a piece of bacon and popped it in her mouth.

“Nothing fancy,” my dad said. “I’m not talking about an Alfa Romeo here. But a car. Something that runs.”

He was happy, I could tell, at the mere thought.

“A car?” my mom asked, dumbfounded.

“Yes. You’ve heard of it? Four wheels. Takes gasoline.”

It was no secret that since he was a boy, my dad had lusted after cars, and the pinnacle of his obsession would have been to own one. Once, he bought an issue of Autoweek at the Newark Newsstand, and for the past few years he’d consoled himself by flipping through it while he lay on the couch, licking his thumb before he turned each thin, glossy page, staring for what seemed like hours at a sleek black Maserati or a balloonish blue Bugatti. Enrique and I used to make fun of him about it, but even when the pages eventually started falling out, my dad just taped them together and flipped through it again.

“But what will we do with a car?” my mom asked. She looked at my dad now with mild amusement, as if he had just suggested they buy an elephant.

“What do you think?” my dad said. “We’ll drive it.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. You could drive to the Pathmark.”

“I don’t know how to drive.”

“You’ll learn.”

“Can I drive it?” I asked.

“You don’t have a license yet,” my dad said.

“But when I get one, I mean.”

“Rafa, be serious,” my mom went on. “We don’t need a car. We could go to Panamá ten times with that money.”

My dad rubbed his chin. He looked at the two of us, sitting there, eating breakfast. I could tell, and I’m sure my mom could, too, that he had made up his mind.

“We’re getting a car,” he said.


THE AUTO DEALERSHIPS in our town were on Cleveland Avenue. Cars waxed and gleaming, plastic pennant flags crisscrossed over the lots. But of course, because my dad was always looking for a bargain, Cleveland Avenue wasn’t where we went.

We took a bus instead to a used-car lot that my dad had found through an ad in the newspaper. It was in the middle of nowhere, and the winter sun shone over the acres and acres of land that surrounded it. The hard grass crunched under our feet as we walked and the wind squealed, tearing holes through the air.

My mom grimaced and pulled the collar of her coat up around her face. “Is it supposed to snow today?” she asked.

My dad was already way ahead of us.

“It’s supposed to snow?” I said, excited by the prospect.

“I don’t know. I’m just asking. I can’t believe it’s January and we haven’t even had flurries yet.”

I looked up at the sky. Even though the air was frigid, it seemed to me like the sun was too bright for snow, but maybe I was wrong. I hoped I was wrong.

The only reason I’d come was because my dad thought he might need a translator. I told him, “You use English every day.” But my dad had argued that he didn’t know the language of cars. To him, everything had its own language—the language of breakfast, the language of business, the language of politics, and on and on. In Spanish he knew all the languages, but for as long as he’d been speaking English, he believed he knew it only in certain realms. He never talked about cars with anyone in English, he said. Therefore, he didn’t know the language. It was no use explaining to him that I didn’t exactly spend my days talking about cars with people, either. To him, I knew all the languages of English the way he did those of Spanish. And as proud as he was that I was so good at one, I think he was also ashamed that I wasn’t better at the other.

The cars were in a big cluster, parked at odd angles, some with their tires in a rut, some without tires at all. My dad walked through the maze of them, his hands in his pockets, and examined them silently.