Scars–First Scene Second Pass

Scars

“Well hell, it ain’t like I died!”

David wiped away the tear that pestered the corner of his eye. What an odd day it had become. In the soft light of the early morning, he had been circling through the parking lot of the Home Depot in Ridgeland, quietly excited, energized by the idea of beginning his new project and a little frustrated that it seemed that the man who had answered his Craig’s list ad was a no show. Once, twice, three times around the track of the lot’s little roads with no sign of the man who had convinced him that he was capable of the job, and who had agreed to meet him in front of the store at 6:00. David stopped under the carport where people load lumber before making a fourth lap and, irritated, struggled to pull his phone out of the pocket of his shorts. He scrolled through his recent phone calls, hoping that the guy’s number was still on the list, and tossed the phone into the passenger seat when it became apparent that it wasn’t.

Only when he looked up did he see the kid standing there, one hand resting on the Audi’s hood. They made eye contact. The kid smiled a broken smile of crooked teeth, then waved, then mouthed something that David couldn’t hear. Panhandler. From behind the wheel he shrugged his shoulders, then put his hand up to his ear to let the boy know he couldn’t hear him and thought for a moment about driving away, but instead rolled down the window when the kid moved toward the driver’s side.

“Yes Sir, good morning,” the kid said with the southern drawl typical of that part of Mississippi. David recognized the voice from their phone conversations “Are you the fence guy? I apologize Sir, but I ain’t too good at remembering names.”

“Yeah, that’s me. David. Are you Tony?” He emphasized the “you” too much, inadvertently made it obvious that he was disappointed with what he saw, letting the kid know that he was expecting someone older, bigger, stronger.

“Yes Sir, Mr. David. Glad to meet you.” He stuck his hand into the car to shake David’s hand.

“How old are you, Tony?” David asked as he took the rough hand in his own. The boy was immediately crestfallen, had the look of a person who had been disappointed countless times before, and let his chin sink to his chest.

“You think I’m not the right guy for this job, don’t you Sir?” He let David’s hand slip from his own, quietly, and averted his eyes. He paused for a moment, as if considering whether to walk away but then in a sudden burst of resolve blurted out “I work construction all week, every day.” He paused again, eyes to the ground, obviously deciding whether he should keep talking or just cut his losses and leave. “I know what you’re seein’ is a skinny kid, and you’re thinkin’ that you made a mistake and that I won’t be able to handle this.” His face screwed up with regret for what he was about to say, eyes now focused on David’s, but quickly flashed to a look of determination. “To be honest Sir, and with all due respect, I’m wondering if I made a mistake and if you’re gonna be able to handle this, ‘cause you don’t look like you ever done ANY hard work or ever built nothin’.”

Tony was right, of course. David was a key account manager for a telecommunications company but felt the anger and shame boil up inside of his head. He was sure it showed on his face and knew the kid saw it because he turned to walk away.

“Whoa whoa! Slow down!” David suddenly felt guilty for judging him. “I never said any of that. I didn’t even think it. I guess I was just expecting an older guy, but it doesn’t matter how old you are if you can help me get this done.” Tony stopped walking, but didn’t turn around. “I need your help.” He flicked the button that unlocked the doors. “Hop in.”

Reluctantly Tony went around the car, opened the door and slumped into the seat. He stared straight ahead. While they rode the few miles to David’s house, he secretly examined his new employee, scanning him from the corner of his eye. Tony was still a kid, 19 or 20 years old at most, and with a long, bony frame that seemed like it would snap under even the lightest pressure. Black hair jutted out in clumps from beneath a filthy Atlanta Braves cap, and the hairless skin of his face shown with the baked chicken brown of people who spend all of daylight outside. He seemed taller when he was standing outside the car and looked like a little boy sitting in the passenger seat.

He was wearing two work boots but they were not a pair, one very dark brown and one light. David couldn’t see if he was wearing a sock on his left foot, but he definitely had one on his right—a bright pink, fuzzy one like women wear to bed on chilly winter nights which disappeared into the leg of a threadbare pair of jeans. His hands were the rough hands of a worker, broken, ashy callouses in the crook of his thumb and along his index finger, and with splits surrounded by borders of white, freshly healed scar tissue in the creases of his knuckles. He rubbed his knees, slowly and constantly.

His phone buzzed and Tony instantly retrieved it from his back pocket. Experienced thumbs tapped in a security code, he chuckled as he read the text he had received, and tapped in his reply. The phone buzzed again and when David glanced over, he noticed that the text was in Spanish. “You speak Spanish?”

“Yessir. I’m Mexican—well, half Mexican. I know I don’t look it. My dad’s white, but my momma’s Mexican.”

“Well, it’s great that you’re bilingual. Gives you a lot of opportunities.”

“Yessir.” He said it more in acknowledgement of David’s words than in agreement.

“Did your Mom teach you Spanish from the beginning?”

“Yes Sir. It’s the first language I learned. I didn’t speak nothin’ else until I was eight.”

“Eight?” David laughed a little. “That can’t be right. You would have gone to school when you were five, and you couldn’t go to school without knowing at least some English.” He turned his head to look at the kid, who sighed deeply and then looked at the floorboards.

“The thing is, Sir, that Momma didn’t send none of us to school until I was eight. My sister was nearly 10, and we didn’t either one of us speak no English, except maybe some words that we learned from television.”

“What!?” David was incredulous. “Why did she wait so long? Why didn’t they teach you English? They had to know that it would put you behind.”

“Yessir, she knew that. But the thing you gotta understand is that my momma is an illegal. She don’t speak no English, even to this day. Daddy left when I was just a little baby, so Momma was on her own. She was afraid that if she sent us to school, they would find her and send her to Mexico. Because of the forms, you know?”

“The forms?”

“Yessir, the forms that you have to fill out to put a kid in school. Mexicans don’t like to tell the government who they are and where they are, ‘cause they’re afraid that they’ll get sent back. Me and Millie were born here, so Momma was afraid that they would send her back but keep us here.”

“Oh my God, that’s terrible. What a thing to live with”

“Yessir.”

“So why did she eventually send you? To school?”

“Well, and of course I don’t remember this but this is what they tell me—I guess one day, somebody from the welfare office or something came to talk to her, and told her that the state would take us away if she didn’t put us in school. Momma says it was a woman who she worked with who got mad at her and called Human Services on us, but Millie thinks it was Chucho.”

“Huh. So how did you learn English?”

“Oh, it sucked.” He wagged his head slowly from side to side, still looking at the floorboards, and rubbed his hands together. “They just put us into class. Didn’t speak no English. I didn’t even know when people were saying my name at first—it’s really Antonio—because it sounds so different when you say it in English. I was in the first grade—Millie they put in second ‘cause she could read, but in Spanish.

“To be honest Sir, I don’t really know how I learned English. I just did ‘cause I didn’t have no choice. But I do remember this. The teachers yelled at us all the time. Every day. I remember that lady—the one who was my first teacher? —holding a pencil in front of my face and screaming pencil, pencil, pencil over and over like she had to yell in order for me to get it. Or maybe ‘cause she was angry that she had to teach it? All I knew then was that people were yelling at me ‘cause I was different, so I made it so I wasn’t different, and I learned. It was terrible. Never did like school because of it.”

David didn’t know what to say, and neither of them said anything for the few minutes more that it took to get to his house. When they pulled in the driveway, Tony said “I’m gonna grab a smoke before we get started. You mind?”

David never let anyone smoke at his house but didn’t have the heart to tell the kid so. “No problem. See you around back.”