Carlos’ Tacos Carlos’ Tacos

By Hariharan Velmurugan

Third Place Winner of Western‘s Literary Magazine for High School Excellence Writing Contest

It’s been a week since dad had to close his restaurant. He hasn’t been the same since. Every night he would tell us stories and we would have conversations about our day. We would watch movies together. But nowadays, he would just sit on the couch at night, too exhausted to do anything but sit. All day he would be out of the house trying to find a job, but so far, he had no such luck. Every time I ask him about how everything is going, he always says the same thing. “Don’t worry about adult stuff. Your only job is to study hard.” If I tried to say anything after, he would just shoo me off. I was older now, and I deserved to know about our family situation. He doesn’t understand that.

Lockdown just ended, but dad doesn’t have the money to reopen his business. He keeps saying that he’s happy as long as we are together, but I know he’s empty on the inside. Money is not really tight, but dad feels useless when mom is earning most of the money for us. He doesn’t say it out loud, but it’s obvious. Me and mom tried to convince him that he’s helping out a lot around the house, but there’s no point.

He won’t even listen. He goes to job interviews every week, but it’s hard for him considering he has no culinary degree. He was self-taught and had no need for a degree until now. Mom tells me to give him some space and that he would eventually come around, but for me, ‘coming around’ was not good enough.

At school today, I got my first F. I started panicking. Dad gave me one job to do and that was to study. If I fail at that then he wouldn’t trust me with anything else.

“Carlos, did you get your science test back?” dad asked, later that day.

I gulped. There was a huge boulder in my throat. I closed my eyes and said, “No, Mr. Z didn’t finish grading it yet.” It was the first lie I had ever told to my parents, and it felt horrible. Like my body weighed so much I couldn’t even move it. Dad nodded, indicating I could leave. I walked away rigid, without saying much. I walked up to my room and closed the door. I needed to release some stress, so I took out my notebook and started doodling.

My notebook was special to me. It had all my secrets, ideas and my doodles. It was filled with pictures of fartfueled rockets that I’d drawn when I was younger, to more sophisticated drawings of actual rockets. I also wrote about ideas for new video games and inventions. I once wrote about watches that could also track your health, until I realised Fitbits and Apple Watches were a thing. Most of the things in my notebook were private, and I wanted to keep it that way, except for one idea. It was a great idea, if I had to say so myself.

I thought, since dad couldn’t open a restaurant, he could use Uncle Rob’s old truck for a food truck business. He could even call it, ‘Carlos’ Tacos’. I wanted to share it with dad, but I knew he wouldn’t approve of it.

The next day, dad came home and announced to us that he had gotten a job. He was a custodian at a nearby bank. I was hurt. I couldn’t imagine my dad being anything but a chef. He did not look happy sharing that news either. I knew he wanted to stay a chef, too, but he had no hope left in him.

“But you ’ re a chef, Dad. You’re supposed to be making tacos, not clean floors,” I said.

Dad gave me a sad look then said, “I can’t stay home forever, Carlos. I need to go out and be useful to the family.”

I wanted to say many things then. I wanted to say he was useful for the family. He cooked for me and mom, and he helped me with my homework, but I knew there was no point. Instead, a tear trickled down my cheek as I ran into my room.

I was sobbing into my pillow, when dad knocked on my door. He came in without an answer, and I glared at him. He laughed and sat next to my leg. Not knowing what to say, he picked up my notebook and went to put it away, when he saw my idea for the food truck. I jumped and grabbed the notebook away from him. His eyes gleamed when he saw the page.

“Carlos, why are you hiding this?” he said.

“Because, you are just going to tell me to focus on school and not on family issues,” I said.

His eyes saddened and came to a realisation. “I’m sorry about keeping you in the dark about our family issues,” he said. “I didn’t want to worry you. I didn’t know you had great ideas like this.”

Great ideas? Was it actually that great, I thought. I gave the notebook to dad to let him go through it. He went to the page with the food truck idea. He smiled.

“Are you going to start a food truck business?” I said.

“You know what,” he said, “I’ll give it a try. It is pretty risk free after all. We don’t even have to buy a truck. And what’s the point of any more employees when I have a genius in the house?” He grinned at me.

I laughed, glad that he was acting light-hearted again.

“You have to remember one thing though, son, ” he said. “We all have our failures in life, but no matter whether this plan fails or not, I would still love you. Life will always try to humble us if we hold our head up too high, so we have to be prepared for failure.”

He went through the rest of the notebook and came across the F I got on the science test. He looked at me and smiled, and then he said, “Even geniuses’ make mistakes.”

The next day, me, dad, mom and Uncle Rob started working on the food truck. I made the logo and the design for the truck. Mom and dad painted the truck based off of my design, and Uncle Rob was greasing and oiling the truck so it moved smoothly. I looked at dad and saw him smiling while he painted. He was enjoying this, and he hadn’t smiled like this in a long time. Western’s

It filled my chest with a warm gust of air.