18
Mago and Reyna with Carlos at his wedding
A MONTH LATER, my father came home with an old yellow Datsun he’d bought from a friend. He told Carlos the car was for him. Carlos had just finished his first year at Los Angeles City College. “My Carnal is going to make me proud,” Papi said while looking at Mago in disappointment. The car was old, but Carlos didn’t care. He smiled and rushed to grab the keys from Papi. They went for a drive, and I watched as they drove away. I turned to glance at Mago’s Toyota Tercel. I was glad Papi had thought about getting Carlos a car so he wouldn’t be tempted to buy one himself and get into debt. Mago’s Tercel was beautiful, the color of a calm ocean, but when I thought about what it had really cost her, I would find myself hating it, as if it were the car’s fault my sister had given up her education.
“We’ll see how long that piece of junk lasts,” Mago said.
I hoped that when I started college, Papi would buy me a car, too. Even if it was an old rickety one like the one he’d bought Carlos. As long as it came from my father, I knew I would treasure it, the way I treasured anything positive he said to me during his rare sober moments.
What my father hadn’t been counting on when he got Carlos the car was that now it would also be easier for Carlos to see his girlfriend. Her name was Griselda, and he’d met her at Franklin. She was his first official girlfriend, and Carlos was crazy about her. Mago and I thought it was because Griselda didn’t seem to care about Carlos’s crooked teeth, which were the bane of his existence. Even though he would beg our father to help him get his teeth fixed, Papi would keep telling him no, that it was expensive and he couldn’t afford it. Just like Mago and her scars, Carlos couldn’t see past the ugliness of his teeth.
Between school and his girlfriend, Carlos stayed busy. The summer passed, and the fall semester began with Carlos doing very well in school. His dream was to major in criminal justice and catch bad guys. Like Papi, he had no tolerance for gang members. He swore to clean up the streets of Los Angeles and get rid of them. But one day, he came home and told Papi that he was very much in love.
“You mean you think you’re in love,” Papi said. “At your age, what do you know about being in love?” Carlos would be turning twenty in February.
“I love Griselda, and I’m going to marry her,” Carlos said. “I’m asking you to please go with me to ask for her hand in marriage.”
“You’re crazy,” Papi said. “I will do no such thing. I don’t know what you’re thinking. You’re going to school. Do you know what’s going to happen if you get married? You will have to drop out of school and get a job so that you can support your wife. Why would you want to throw away your chance at getting an education to marry some girl you just met?”
“I love her,” Carlos said.
“I don’t know why I even brought you kids to this country, just so you could throw it all away. It was an opportunity of a lifetime, do you realize that?” Papi said. This time, he didn’t just look at Carlos, but at Mago and me. “Do you know how many people would die to be in your shoes? To have the opportunities you have here?”
Back then, I hadn’t really been aware of the many young people who, like us, had been brought to the U.S. as children, but who, unlike us, had not been lucky enough to get their legal residency. My father was right. There were many people who would have died to have the chance that my siblings and I had of going to college. But it wouldn’t be until later that I would finally understand.
“I don’t care,” Carlos said, standing up. “I’m going to marry her.”
Mago and I tried to talk Carlos out of this marriage, but he refused to listen. Next thing I knew, he had asked my mother to go with him to Griselda’s house to ask for her hand in marriage. My mother went along with his plans and just like that, a month and a half after his twentieth birthday, Carlos became a married man, the head of his own household. Just as Papi had feared, Carlos dropped out of college, found a small apartment for himself and his new wife, and got himself two jobs.
Eighteen months—and a son—later, he got divorced, but he never finished college.