July 2nd, 2022
“De verda’. No te creo, de verda’.”
Says Father on the phone, at home, about to get into bed, but talking to Son instead, for the first time in months.
“You have had a job for the last six months. You tell me you liked it. You tell me you were good at it. And now, you go on a visa run, and you’re in a new place, and it’s simply . . . different. ¿Eso es todo? ¿Eso es la razon para fugir de tus responsibilidades de nuevo?”
“I’m not leaving my responsibilities,” Son spits back, along with a gruff, boyish sigh. “No me escuchas. I’m just telling you I’m in Guatemala, and it is a better place than Mexico in a lot of ways.”
“So you don’t want to teach anymore.”
Son groans angrily.
“If I can get a job teaching here, ¿why does it matter?”
“¿Do you know if there are such jobs? I know gringos like to go to Mexico. It’s one of the few Latin American countries with an economy. ¿Do they go to Guatemala? ¿And do people pay them?”
“I am hanging up,” he says. “Goodbye.”
“No,” Father says, stamping his foot. “No. You have to listen to your father for once. You can’t leave every time life is getting difficult for you. Life is difficult, mi hijo. I am living in one of the worst countries in the world, and I am surviving somehow. This is because if you don’t confront the difficulties of life, you don’t grow. You see how well we manage despite it being so difficult here? That is because we have worked hard for our place in this society, and the society knows that. That is why no gang has taken my life yet. Even if you’re in Caracas, even if you’re in hell itself, you have to learn to force yourself to stay in a place and work, to build relationships and grow with others. Do you understand me? Do you listen?”
There is no reply. The reason why is not because Son is there listening. If he were, he would be interrupting Father to try to assert his opinion. Son is actually no longer on the line. He hung up after he said goodbye, and Father was simply talking at his phone.
Father looks at his phone and wonders if he should call again. He wonders if it was worth the bolivar to call, only to remember that despite the fact that his son had chosen to live a life where he made zero effort to earn money, Father was able to afford these calls for a reason. He had those bolivares. Father put the phone away.
It is the middle of the night. Father pauses to look out from his window at the other houses in his suburb. The beauty of the east of Caracas stuns him. Lush hills surround the landscape of Boleita, and even in the night, even with the fog, the greenness of the foliage intrude into the houses and apartment buildings somehow. Not a single house or apartment building looks dilapidated. Father had to work a lot and spend a lot of money to be able to afford to live in a neighbourhood like this.
Despite that, the changes in Venezuela had made it such that Father might as well have been living in the poorest slum housing. Safety was guaranteed nowhere in the city. A gang member could come up and shoot him at any time, whether he was in the car waiting in traffic or buying his groceries.
If Father had gotten the chance to migrate to somewhere like the United States, he would have been in a house of at least three stories. He would have worked in a hospital with opportunities or had a private practice with which he would have earned a lot of money. He wouldn’t have had to worry about being shot up randomly; he probably wouldn’t have had to worry about a single thing.
Son had gone all the way to the United States to get an arts degree, to make no money, and then he had gotten deported. And now he was travelling around, trying to teach, still figuring out his way.
This was all despite the economic crisis that Venezuela had been afflicted with for almost a decade.
One of the proudest days of Mother’s and Father’s lives was the graduation ceremony after Son had graduated high school. When he had gotten that scholarship to Chicago, Father had been convinced that his son was off to greater things.
And yet, looking back a decade and four years since that day, and comparing it to this view from Father’s window, Father sighs.
How little things had changed, despite the fact that Father had first set out from his village wanting to change everything.
August 12th, 2008
The convention hall where Father and Mother had hosted Son’s graduation ceremony was on one of the highways that went into the hills. It was during the golden years of the Hugo Chavez regime. The highway had just been recently paved, and Father had plenty of money to spend on the booking. He had gone out of his way to rent a cumbia band which played so loudly. The attendees either sat at the table and drank their wine or danced on the stage, pretending that there wasn’t someone outside threatening to randomly shoot someone up or prostitutes about beckoning for their client of the night.
As for the guests, Father was close to none of them. They were mostly neighbours that Mother in that decade had gone out of her way to impress, and some of her church friends. Back in the late 2000s, Mother had dozens of them. She was far more social and kept inviting people to their home, in the hopes that they would take pause at how beautiful the china she had imported was. Among the guests there was next to no one of Son’s generation, except for the sons and daughters of other neighbours. Back then Father didn’t think about it, but looking back, it really stuck out to him how little Son interacted with people of his age.
The neighbours were dressed in either the whitest of gowns or the most dressed up of tuxedos. Father spent most of that night going to all of the tables and thanking each of the guests for coming. Son was also visiting the tables to chat each of them up, spending much longer than the other kids his age talking to each and every family member. People came up to Father and said that Son was so charming. And they were so proud that he had gotten a scholarship. Very few of them had heard of Northwestern, but Father had taken the time to Google it earlier to show off how prestigious of a school it was. When he shared the facts that he had memorized, the neighbours no longer cared that Son was studying something in the arts. Even though Venezuela was middle class, everyone still wanted to get out, and given that it was the United States, where Son would have access to a good visa, everyone was elated. Only one of the neighbours, who happened to be from the house right down from Father’s, asked how Son was going to make any money studying English-language theatre. It was a time when English was just starting to be important for global trade, so Father told him, without a single pause, about how Son was going to improve his English by studying the arts, and then find a good job, in any field, because English was the path of the future, and Son was thinking ahead.
All of the neighbours were so impressed, and they wished him only the best.
Eventually, Son gave a speech on stage. He spoke long and eloquently about what it meant to go abroad for him, and how he couldn’t wait to see the United States and make a place for himself in the world. Everyone clapped with such pride when he finished, and people came up to him and told him that he had given a genuine and well-thought-out speech.
Father never lost his smile for a single moment that night. He really was convinced that Son was leaving the country so that he could improve things for all of them.
June 17th, 2009
After Son’s first year at Northwestern, on another balmy, hot summer day, Son started labelling himself that way. Mother was in the middle of peeling and cutting some caimito into symmetrical slices, while Father was sitting at his table shirtless with his shorts on. The fan was whirring, but the heat was baking into every part of the room, and Father was sweating despite doing nothing.
And then Son came into the room. He saw Father and averted eyes. Father asked, “Como esta’, ¿mi hijo?” but got no response. There was a lot of empty looking but no talking.
And then he finally said it.
“Soy un homosexual.”
It was said so abruptly, with no pause, no nothing. The sound of something cracking and clashing in the kitchen made Father jump up to his feet. But when he went to her, she immediately pushed him away, saying that she was taking care of it, that there was glass everywhere. Son came in to the kitchen and tried to help her clean it up, but Mother gave him a long look and said, “Can you leave me to clean, ¿por favor?”
In the noise of breaking glass, Father had completely lost what Son had said. He asked Son to repeat himself. Son made a pained face.
“No dije nada, de verda’.”
Son went back to his room. Mother cleaned up after her mess, and Father had the caimito without his family.
When they regrouped at the table during dinner time, it was like nothing had been said. Mother had made some chicharrón, and they all laughed and smiled and discussed nothing about what Son had uttered.
Son would only clarify his sexuality three years later, when he was about to graduate, and broke the news to them that he was making plans to stay in Chicago for good.
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