[luis alberto urrea]
Nobody’s Son By Luis Alberto Urrea
Here’s a story about a family that comes from Tijuana and settles into the ‘hood, hoping for the American Dream. It’s a small picture of a few moves in the chess game of disaster. The family game starting to fall apart from the buried rage and broken souls. I’m not saying it’s our story. I’m not saying it isn’t. It might be yours. They lived at 3935 National Avenue. When she was feeling well, Mother fed the birds on their narrow strip of lawn. She tore chunks from three or four slices of bread, and she and the boy tossed them out in the middle of the grass. Then they watched through the living room window, hiding behind the edge of the Venetian blinds, as sparrows, pigeons, and the occasional mockingbird descended to squabble over the food. The boy thought the blinds came from Venus. Their apartment was in the last building of the development, and the pavement of National Avenue didn’t extend to the alley that ran behind their kitchen door. They lived in the lower back corner, in a two-bedroom apartment with a small kitchen/dining alcove and a living room. The boy shared one bedroom with his mother. His father slept in the other room, alone. Outside, there were the kinds of bushes that passed for greenery in Southern California. A dark-leaved hibiscus covered the opening beneath the concrete stairs to the second-story apartments. The boy had his cave there behind the bush. Sometimes, after he’d watched a Hercules movie with his father, he’d climb the outside of the stairway and leap onto the lawn, swinging a plastic sword.
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