The Last Karankawas(12)
Jess adjusts his grip on the landline. His palms have gone sweaty, which irritates him and thickens his voice. “Yeah. Yes.”
Some clicking noises, a mechanical whir. Jess thinks how stupid this is. No one is there; his sisters gone on various errands; even Mama, who rarely leaves the house unless it’s for her janitorial day shifts at UTMB, has disappeared. He should just hang up. No one would know, and it would serve the asshole right—
“Hello, Eva? Can you hear me?”
The voice. His voice. Higher than Jess remembers, a bit rougher, too. Was that time? Nervousness? Some mysterious prison reason?
“Hello?” he asks again, and Jess answers before he can think about it.
“It’s me, Dad.”
“Mijo?” The high voice pitches a degree higher. “Jesusmaría?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, wow. Oh, wow, son. I haven’t talked—it’s been a long time. You—you sound so grown.”
What can he possibly say to that? “Thanks.”
Some 150 miles away, his father clears his throat, and Jess recognizes the nervous habit he has apparently never been able to shake. “Well, you sound real good. Healthy. How you been?”
“Fine.” Another silence. Jess feels no urge to break it. Instead he strains to hear background noises. If he listens hard enough, can he hear prisoners yelling? Fights? Screams and orders from the guards? But there is only his father, only their dual breaths mingling through the line.
“I sent you letters, mijo.”
“Yeah, I haven’t read them.” The bitterness flares up. He knows he sounds like a child, but in that moment he doesn’t care. “I don’t really give a shit what you’ve got to say to me.”
“Aha.” His father laughs. Laughs, and Jess’s anger surges. “There it is. Go on, son, get it out. Just get it out the way.”
“Fuck you.”
“Nah, none of that. You say what you got to say straight. Like a man.”
“You want me to say it straight? Fine.” Conqueror. Child of Vikings. He sucks in a breath and speaks through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to read any letters or talk to you, period. I don’t fucking forgive you. You put us in danger, and you went to jail, and you’re why Ma had to go back to work all these years. She should hate you for that, but she doesn’t. She hates me.” The words feel like oyster shells, ragged, caught in his throat. “You made me the bad guy.”
“Whoa, hold on now. I didn’t make you no kind of bad. She doesn’t think that.”
“Bullshit,” he spits. “She thinks it’s my fault you’re there.”
“She doesn’t, boy. She’s the one who called the cops on me.”
A moment ago, fast in the grip of his own fury, Jess would have thought there was nothing his father could say to quiet him. But this does. His mother? Devoted, loyal to her husband to the end, wasn’t she? It cannot be true. But of course it is. Of course.
His heart gives a dull, plodding thud, one he feels behind his teeth.
His father continues. “The gunshots were the last straw, she said. Meant to scare us and they worked. She called the cops next morning. I was in the room when she did it. She never blamed it on you, son. She wanted the bags as evidence, sabes? You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Your mom and I had problems, we still do. But I’m not gonna fucking pretend like I danced on in here just because of her. It’s been rough. I get it. But I promise, you didn’t do nothing. Understand?”
Jess stares at the coiled wire of the landline in his hand. The man left. He is gone, sent away, and does nothing—can do nothing—to help the family he left behind. The family he threw away. It is always on Jess, on Yvonne, on the girls even, each of them looking after one another and themselves because of a father who carried on crimes and a mother who’d given in to her own guilt. He should be furious; he is.
Ridiculous, then, this sudden urge he feels to lay his head down on his father’s shoulder. To look between his parents and know that one of them, even one, would have his back no matter the battle, that he was no longer fighting alone.
“Jess? Understand?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“And some things I know, even from in here. She needs you—your mom. She’s shit at saying it, but she needs you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Show some respect. She loves you, son. She needs you to be a man—”
Jess jolts at the sound of the recorded voice, cutting in, announcing they have one minute remaining before the call will be disconnected.
“Putamadre. Look, mijo, just know that I’m counting on you. We all are. Your mom says you’re doing real good with ball. That you’re getting scouted. Already getting scouted.” Jess’s stomach tightens, but he says nothing, listening to the rush of his father’s voice, letting the warmth slide over him. “That you’re gonna make it big for us. I’m so proud of you, you know. A real man.”
When they hang up, Jess twines the cord through his fingers. He should have told him about the oystering, how he has found another thing he is good at, that isn’t just the sport his father groomed him for. How he discovered it on his own and is considering doing it full-time. There was a moment when he felt the words form, the shape of them in his mouth. But he let them sit there, and the time on the call ran out until the dial tone hummed in his ear. Now he roots inside himself for a pang of regret, shame—but he feels only sparkling within his veins, an angry sort of pride. Like William being crowned king on Christmas Day 1066, standing before the crowd at Westminster Abbey, snow blanketing the lawn, icicles hanging from the arches. Like standing on a mountaintop that had previously been unsummitable and, looking down at the tiny bodies of his father, mother, friends, everyone he knows, finally recognizing the exact distance between them.