Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Authors: Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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the door.
I thought my back would have another bruise by the time I woke up in the morning. I started the engine, then sat in the idling car for a long time. Finally, I put the car in drive. As I drove home in the morning light, I found myself repeating basic Spanish grammar: yo soy, tu eres, el es, nosotros somos, ustedes son, ellos son . I whispered the word for the sun, sol , then whispered the word for night, noche . I liked night better than sun. Y o soy una noche sin estrellas. It was a sentence. A real sentence. The words did not feel foreign on my tongue.
As I lay in bed, words from my youth came back to me. Fuego. Lluvia. Desierto. Coraje. Odio. Trabajo. Sangre. Corazón. Muerte. I repeated the words to myself, used each one in a simple sentence, then translated it to myself: Tengo la sangre de mi hermana. I have my sister’s blood. En el desierto no cae lluvia. Rain does not fall in the desert. Tengo odio en mi corazón. I have hate in my heart. I wondered if my translations were accurate. I fell asleep translating, trying to make sense of what was inside me—but how could I translate the words on my back? How could I translate what had happened?
I woke up in the afternoon.
I went for a run in the desert.
The boys were there. They would always be there. They would be everywhere I went. There was nothing to do but outrun them. But their hate was a bullet. And who could outrun a bullet?
When I got back home, I took a shower. I knew that nothing could wash away the scars. I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were as black as a starless night.
My mother asked me if I was okay.
I nodded.
“You don’t look okay.”
“It’s just a hangover,” I said.
“You never used to drink,” she said.
There’s a lot of things I never used to do . That’s what I wanted to say. But I didn’t bother. I understood that my mom felt the presence of those words in the room.
I went to work. I waited tables.
I came home and went to my room and prayed for sleep. I remembered me as a boy, leaning into my mother’s shoulder during mass and wondering if God saw us. I remembered watching my father work in the sun, his skin glowing in his own sweat. I remembered the boy I had been in high school, looking up words in a dictionary. I fell asleep trying to think of the word for what I felt.
When I woke in the morning, I told myself that the scars on my back had always been there. They were nothing more than birthmarks. I thought of that night. I told myself I should not have yelled; I should not have been outraged as if that act had been undeserved and violent and indecent; I should not have begged them to stop in the name of a god I did not even believe in. What I should have done—when they were holding me down—what I should have done when they took that knife and wrote on me as if the knife was merely a pen and my own blood nothing more than ink—what I should have done—I should have looked at my attackers and told them I had been waiting for them. I should have looked them all in the eyes and told them I knew their hate, understood it, embraced its awful necessity. I should have offered up my body as a sacrifice to their cruel and hungry gods. It was a war, after all, and sacrifices were necessary in a war—though I had never acknowledged that the war existed.
War. Guerra . That was me. That was my name.
And then I knew that I would have to relearn the meaning of every word I had ever learned. I would have to learn how to translate all those words. Thousands of them. Millions of them. And then I smiled and felt the tears running down my face. Finally I understood. It wasn’t the words that mattered. It was me. I mattered . So now I would have to fight to translate myself back into the world of the living.
THE RULE MAKER
1.
There are things I still remember about growing up in Juárez: I remember the name of my school, Escuela Carlos Amaya. I remember my first grade teacher’s name, Laura Cedillos. I
I thought my back would have another bruise by the time I woke up in the morning. I started the engine, then sat in the idling car for a long time. Finally, I put the car in drive. As I drove home in the morning light, I found myself repeating basic Spanish grammar: yo soy, tu eres, el es, nosotros somos, ustedes son, ellos son . I whispered the word for the sun, sol , then whispered the word for night, noche . I liked night better than sun. Y o soy una noche sin estrellas. It was a sentence. A real sentence. The words did not feel foreign on my tongue.
As I lay in bed, words from my youth came back to me. Fuego. Lluvia. Desierto. Coraje. Odio. Trabajo. Sangre. Corazón. Muerte. I repeated the words to myself, used each one in a simple sentence, then translated it to myself: Tengo la sangre de mi hermana. I have my sister’s blood. En el desierto no cae lluvia. Rain does not fall in the desert. Tengo odio en mi corazón. I have hate in my heart. I wondered if my translations were accurate. I fell asleep translating, trying to make sense of what was inside me—but how could I translate the words on my back? How could I translate what had happened?
I woke up in the afternoon.
I went for a run in the desert.
The boys were there. They would always be there. They would be everywhere I went. There was nothing to do but outrun them. But their hate was a bullet. And who could outrun a bullet?
When I got back home, I took a shower. I knew that nothing could wash away the scars. I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were as black as a starless night.
My mother asked me if I was okay.
I nodded.
“You don’t look okay.”
“It’s just a hangover,” I said.
“You never used to drink,” she said.
There’s a lot of things I never used to do . That’s what I wanted to say. But I didn’t bother. I understood that my mom felt the presence of those words in the room.
I went to work. I waited tables.
I came home and went to my room and prayed for sleep. I remembered me as a boy, leaning into my mother’s shoulder during mass and wondering if God saw us. I remembered watching my father work in the sun, his skin glowing in his own sweat. I remembered the boy I had been in high school, looking up words in a dictionary. I fell asleep trying to think of the word for what I felt.
When I woke in the morning, I told myself that the scars on my back had always been there. They were nothing more than birthmarks. I thought of that night. I told myself I should not have yelled; I should not have been outraged as if that act had been undeserved and violent and indecent; I should not have begged them to stop in the name of a god I did not even believe in. What I should have done—when they were holding me down—what I should have done when they took that knife and wrote on me as if the knife was merely a pen and my own blood nothing more than ink—what I should have done—I should have looked at my attackers and told them I had been waiting for them. I should have looked them all in the eyes and told them I knew their hate, understood it, embraced its awful necessity. I should have offered up my body as a sacrifice to their cruel and hungry gods. It was a war, after all, and sacrifices were necessary in a war—though I had never acknowledged that the war existed.
War. Guerra . That was me. That was my name.
And then I knew that I would have to relearn the meaning of every word I had ever learned. I would have to learn how to translate all those words. Thousands of them. Millions of them. And then I smiled and felt the tears running down my face. Finally I understood. It wasn’t the words that mattered. It was me. I mattered . So now I would have to fight to translate myself back into the world of the living.
THE RULE MAKER
1.
There are things I still remember about growing up in Juárez: I remember the name of my school, Escuela Carlos Amaya. I remember my first grade teacher’s name, Laura Cedillos. I
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