“Steaks are so expensive,” Mrs. Lopez said.
Mr. Lopez mumbled something in Spanish to her, and although we all heard it, no one let on. Mrs. Lopez lowered her eyes and stopped eating for a moment.
Dad’s painful grin came to his face, his eyes brightened, their sparkle accentuating his grin, bringing out the devil in his features, and I knew Dad was thinking of a way to use what he
had just witnessed to his benefit.
After dinner, the adults stayed at the dining room table drinking wine. Mrs. Lopez and Rubin cleared the dishes off the table with a little help from me and Mom. All the while, Mr. Lopez and Dad sat at either end of the table like generals readying for battle. Luckily that night would only be war games.
Wanting to make up for my earlier silence, I gladly followed Rubin back to his room.
Rubin didn’t seem used to having company in his room, or much company period. I knew I was nervous, but he seemed to be a little as well. It was as if he didn’t know what to do with me or himself. He sat on the edge of his bed, which was lower than I remembered from before, so when he was seated, his knees were almost even with his eyes.
I stood in the center of the room. There was a chair, but it was pulled up to the desk and looked officially put away. Rubin had on gym shorts that originally had been blue but now were a faded gray. He pulled at the crotch several times, then saw me looking and stopped.
“What’s four times nine?” he asked.
Four times nine? I saw the phrase in my mind and hoped somehow the words would evolve into the correct answer.
“Don’t make such an ugly face,” Rubin said. “If you don’t know the answer, say so. Your dad told my pop you are smart, but you don’t know what four times nine is?”
“Math is my weakest subject in school.”
I couldn’t believe how I answered Rubin. That was definitely not how I should speak to him to make him my friend. I started to take it back, but Rubin was smiling.
“Thirty-six,” he said.
“That’s what I thought.”
“No it wasn’t. And don’t ever talk to me like that at the dojo. But do talk to everyone else, except for Mr. Bollars, like that. It’ll keep the older guys from trying to push you around.”
This was advice I was taking, and it seemed like Dad’s advice about beating people to the fuck, only Rubin worded it much nicer.
“Have a seat,” Rubin said. He leaned his head toward the chair.
“You like models,” I said, pointing to the ceiling.
“I like planes. I’m going to be a Navy pilot. Pop worked on them when he was in service, but I’ll be flying them.”
I didn’t doubt for a second that one day he would be soaring through the clouds.
“You like comic books?” Rubin asked.
How to answer this? Dad said comic books were for dummies, and I never knew anyone at school worth hanging round who read them. Yet Rubin, in Dad’s eyes, was no dummy, and he was certainly worth hanging round. No, while not the most endearing answer, would be truthful.
But I couldn’t risk having Rubin think I was smarting off again. There was one time, after Mom and Dad had one of their fights, that she took me to the drugstore with her and bought me an oversized comic book. I asked for it because it was a Captain America comic book and I liked his nightly TV show.
“I have one large comic book,” I said. “It has more than one story in it with Captain America and some guy with a red skull that’s a Nazi mutant. He always wears a swastika on his arm.”
“I can draw that,” Rubin jumped out of the bed, turned on the lamp over the desk, and started rummaging through the drawer. I, without waiting for him to ask, got out of his way, and
he, without acknowledging me, sat in the vacated chair. He pulled out a tablet of white paper and a pack of colored pencils. “It’s real easy,” he said, and leaned close to the desk, which made it difficult to see how he drew it, but I stood on tiptoe and watched over his right shoulder as he first drew the outline in black, then colored it in softly with quick flicks of his wrist with a fire-red.
He held it up. The swastika sat square in the middle, about to leap off the sheet. “Take it with you. Just don’t let your dad see it. Mine hates that I can draw a swastika. He flips out and starts cursing in Spanish.”
Not only was this a gift, but contraband. Though he fought in the Pacific, I knew Dad would go on a tear for weeks if he saw a swastika in his house. I had to hide it in order to get it
home. But how? If I folded it and placed it in my pocket, the picture would be ruined. I didn’t care for the swastika itself—it was only important because Rubin gave it to me—and for that
reason I wanted it to remain wrinkle-free.
“Son.” Mom’s voice. Though she was my friend, she wouldn’t approve of a swastika either. “You ready to go?” Her voice stayed in the living room, and I was relieved that she wasn’t
coming closer.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be there in a minute.” My hands sweated, moistening the edges of the paper.
“I need to sneak this home without wrinkling it.”
Rubin’s eyes darted round the room.
“Come on, boy, let’s go.” Dad’s voice.
My hands flowed sweat.
“Slip it in here,” Rubin said, handing me a Spiderman comic book. “And take these also.”
He handed me three more comic books. “Keep the one with the picture in the bottom comic book.”
Dad stood in the small living room, hands on hips, arms flared, and chest bowed. “What you got there?”
“Some comic books Rubin let me borrow.”
I prepared for a sarcastic response.
“Good to see you’re reading something other than those books you get from the library about those damn nigger football players.”
When we arrived home, Mom walked in the house first, but Dad grabbed me by the shoulder. I halted and hoped he didn’t want to examine the comic books. Dad turned me to face
him, and a floodlight’s yellow haze made a nimbus round Dad’s head.
“You listen to Rubin. Do whatever he tells you.” Dad stepped back and the floodlight hit me in the face. “You listen to that salt-water nigger boy and you’ll be a black belt in no time.”
CHAPTER 5
Dad despised closed doors in the house. If I shut my bedroom door to look at the swastika, Dad would assume I was up to something, so I waited till he and Mom were asleep before taking a peek at the drawing. It was beautiful, not for what the swastika stood for, but because it was a gift from Rubin, the youngest black belt in the state, and my friend.
At least I assumed we were now friends. But why would Rubin want to be my friend, and reach out to a fat, pimply twelve-year-old white belt? Commonality? Rubin seemed to be in the same situation as me, only he was working his situation better. His father wanted him to make his bed properly, so Rubin did. His father wanted him to be a black belt, so Rubin was. I had to learn how to play the game called Please Dad.
But first I had to hide the swastika. The Monopoly box hadn’t failed me yet, and although I would have preferred to keep the swastika in a place where I could easily view it, good sense won out.
After Mom accompanied us to tae kwon do that one time, Dad stopped recording practice. Instead, he found another way of improving me that required less effort from him: each evening before tae kwon do class, Dad took me to the Lopez house. Dad would pick up a sixpack of Michelob on the way, and he and Mr. Lopez would sit on the back porch talking and occasionally watching as Rubin helped me practice my form. By the end of the week, I had the form down.