5
Papi on Christmas
AFTER HAVING LIMITED access to a television all our lives, Mago, Carlos, and I couldn’t get enough of it now. Even though we couldn’t understand English very well, we loved to watch He-Man, ThunderCats, Transformers, Beverly Hills Teens, and Jem. For a minute we’d also owned an Atari. One of Papi’s tenants had given it to us after she bought her son a Nintendo, but then Mila took it away and gave it to her own children without even telling us. I missed playing Frogger.
One day, while we were watching ThunderCats, Santa Claus appeared on the screen during one of the commercial breaks. Christmas was three weeks away, and we were worried because we didn’t have any money to get Papi a present. He would only give us a dollar once in a while. As soon as we got it, we would run down to Barney’s Liquors and Market on Monte Vista Street and buy Now and Laters. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, Papi would give us a dollar each, and we would pool our money and buy a ham and cheese sandwich from Fidel’s Pizza on Avenue 50.
Santa Claus said something I couldn’t quite understand. But a telephone number flashed on the screen.
Mago rushed to the rotary phone.
“What are you doing?” Carlos said.
“I’m calling Santa.”
“I thought Santa doesn’t exist,” Carlos said.
“What do you mean he doesn’t exist?” I asked. “Don’t you see him there on the TV?”
Mago punched Carlos on the arm. “This is the United States, pendejo. Everything exists here.”
Mago dialed the number and called Santa. She frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Carlos said.
“It’s in English,” Mago said.
“Doesn’t Santa speak Spanish?” I asked.
“Shh,” Mago said. She listened intently, her eyebrows pulling together as she concentrated. Then she smiled.
“Is it really Santa?” I asked.
“It must be,” Mago said, covering the receiver. “He’s talking too fast. All I could make out was ‘Ho, ho, ho.’ So it must be him, right?” Then she motioned for me to be quiet and got back on the line. “Alo? Santa Clos? I want Barbie. I want bike. Please. Me good girl. Tank you.” She gave the phone to Carlos.
“Alo? Alo?” Carlos said, smiling his crooked smile. “A Nintendo. A Nintendo to me. Please.”
“My turn, my turn!” I said, jumping excitedly. Wait, but I don’t know how to say “skates” in English! I turned to Mago and asked her. Carlos gave me the phone, and I clutched it tight in my hands. “Come on, he’s going to hang up!”
Mago kept thinking. Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t know, Nena.”
Frustrated, I put the phone to my ear. “Alo? Santa Clos? Yo quiero patines, por favor. Mándeme unos patines para Navidad. Tank you.” Mago took the phone away and hung up. “Do you think he understood what I said?” I asked them.
“He’s Santa Claus. I don’t see why not,” Mago said. “Don’t worry, Nena.”
We turned back to the TV, but I was no longer interested in ThunderCats. I thought about my skates. In Iguala nobody I knew had skates. You can’t skate on dirt roads. But here, oh, this was the perfect place to own skates! But now I’d ruined my chance of getting them because I was sure Santa Claus hadn’t understood a word I’d said.
“I can’t believe you asked for a Barbie,” Carlos teased Mago. She punched him in the arm but didn’t say anything. Instead, bougainvillea blossomed on her cheeks. I knew why she had done it. When Papi bought me my Barbie, Mago wanted one also, but Papi said she was too old. What my father hadn’t understood was that we had never owned a Barbie. So what do you do when all your life you have yearned for such a thing?
“What are we going to do about a present?” Carlos asked. Christmas was the following day, and we still didn’t have anything for Papi. I glanced at the Christmas tree Mila bought at Pic ’n’ Save. It wasn’t real, but it was the most beautiful tree we’d ever owned. I thought about the branch Tío Crece painted back in Mexico. Though we did a good job decorating it, nothing could compare to that six-foot-tall green beauty shining with colorful lights and glittering with silver garlands.
Mila sent us to Barney’s to buy a bottle of Mazola oil because she had just run out. As we neared the store, Mago stopped and said, “We’re going to do something we have never done before. But at this point, we have no choice.”
“What?” Carlos and I asked. Then Mago shared her plan, which involved stealing. Back in Mexico, we had stolen fruit from people’s property, but we had never stolen anything from a store. The liquor store had mirrors on the walls, and the Koreans who owned it would never take their eyes off the customers. I’d been there enough times to know that.
“What if we get caught?” I asked, already thinking about the spanking we would get. By then Papi had made it clear what his favorite form of discipline was.
“We won’t,” Mago said as she pulled us into the store. We split up. Mago said she would distract the owner while Carlos and I took whatever we thought would make good gifts. The thing was that I wished we had discussed what exactly a good gift was. The liquor store didn’t have much. As I walked around, my stomach churned from fear of getting caught. The Korean lady kept looking at us. Our images were reflected in the mirrors up above. Luckily, her husband wasn’t there, and she couldn’t keep her eyes on all three of us, could she? Could she tell we were up to no good?
Nothing seemed good enough for Papi. Canned food, laundry items, diapers, sanitary napkins, toilet paper, soda bottles, chips. What do I take, what do I take? I glanced at Carlos. He was by the front looking at the bottles of tequila displayed behind the counter. What does he think he is doing? I thought. Those bottles are totally unreachable, and even if he could steal a bottle, why would we want Papi getting more drunk than he already gets?
Mago picked up the bottle of Mazola oil and took it to the counter. There, she knocked over the newspaper rack and the Korean lady yelled at Mago and hurried to pick up the newspapers. I didn’t waste any time. I grabbed an item and hurried out of the store. Carlos came out next, and Mago was last. We rushed up Avenue 50 as fast as we could, our hearts beating faster than when we trespassed into El Cuervo’s mango grove. If we got caught, we wouldn’t be shot at. We would get deported by Papi.
“So what did you guys get?” Mago asked as we neared the house.
Carlos took a can of Aquanet hairspray from underneath his shirt. “They didn’t have much to choose from,” he said when Mago laughed.
“And you?” she asked.
I showed her what I grabbed, a bottle of Trés Flores Brilliantine.
“When have you seen Papi use hair polish?” she asked.
“Never,” I said. “But Tío Crece uses it. And so does Tía Güera’s husband.”
Mago groaned.
“It was the only thing for men I could see!” I said, defending myself.
“I can’t believe you guys,” Mago said as we turned the corner. “We went through all this trouble for those lousy gifts?”
The next day, we ended up giving the bottle of brilliantine to Papi and the hairspray to Mila. Their presents for us were much better, although they weren’t what we had asked Santa for. I got a pair of new Pro Wings tennis shoes. Mago got a pretty peach dress, and Carlos a yellow Tonka truck.
Santa never came. I kept waking up at night and glancing at the fireplace by our sofa bed. I was wondering if he was running late. I would tell myself he had many deliveries to make, and that was why he was taking so long. But what if he knew we had stolen things from the store? What if he decided we weren’t good kids and didn’t deserve his presents?
Two weeks later, there was still no sign of Santa. Papi called us over to the kitchen where he and Mila were going through their mail. “What’s this?” Papi said, holding a bill in his hand. “Who in the world did you call? Why is the bill so high?”
Mago, Carlos, and I looked at each other. We never used the phone. We didn’t know anyone here, so who would we call?
“We haven’t called anyone,” Mago said.
“Are you sure?” Mila said.
“Well, a few weeks ago we did call Santa,” Mago confessed.
“You did what?” Mila said, taking the bill from Papi to look at the number.
“He was on TV, and he said to call him,” Carlos said.
“And we asked him for things, but he didn’t bring them,” I said.
“I can’t believe you kids!” Papi yelled, standing up. We took a step back.
“We didn’t know we would get charged for the call,” Mago said. “We’re sorry, Papi.”
“And he didn’t bring them,” I said again.
“I’m still not done paying my friends back the money they let me borrow for the smuggler,” Papi said, one hand on his belt buckle. “Otherwise, I would put you all on the bus back to Mexico this very night!” He took off his belt and gave us a few lashes with it before grabbing his keys and storming out of the house.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Mila said, writing out a check and putting it inside the return envelope. “Those are just scam artists trying to make money.”
“We’re sorry, Mila,” we said, wiping our teary eyes and massaging the stings on our arms. As we headed back to the living room, I wondered what Mila had meant. Why would Santa want to make money off of us, when he has so much money he gives away toys to hundreds and thousands of kids? I wondered.
Papi returned half an hour later and headed straight to the phone. He worked on it for a few minutes, and we didn’t know what he was doing until he was done and said, “There, now you can’t call anymore.” We walked up to the phone and saw the lock on it, so now we couldn’t turn the little wheel to dial unless we put in a key.
“What if there’s an emergency?” Mago asked. “How are we going to call you?”
But Papi was unmoved.
as the newspaperman’s fascination that prevailed—or at least predominated—and left me dissatisfied with every analysis of Nazism. I wanted to see this monstrous man, the Nazi. I wanted to talk to him and to listen to him. I wanted to try to understand him. We were both men, he and I. In rejecting the Nazi doctrine of racial superiority, I had to concede that what he had been I might be; what led him along the course he took might lead me.