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Father once looked at mother and wondered:
Why? Why don’t you feel? Are you even human?
Today I thought about my dad’s origin story —
click, clack, click —
he walketh through the pavement of his Camelot in the hood of South Central.
An elderly man, most would think…
but once, he was a young boy.
His mother — wild curly hair, slender, cold in the eyes —
would smile politely and always say,
“I think something is wrong with me. I think I am dying.”
His father sold huaraches (Mexican leather sandals) around the pueblo
to provide for the household:
himself, my father, his older brother, and the mother.
Oh, mother…
“I am dying. I think I won’t make it.”
Money, gone.
She was always dying — but never dead.
“I’m gonna take a nap… keep an eye on the beans.
Don’t go out and play with those damn kids.
Don’t burn them.”
The eight-year-old boy runs outside anyway,
laughing with his little buddies,
briefly forgetting the weight of the house behind him.
Then—
“¡Cabrón! The beans are burned!
I told you! Those little bastards — tell them to go home!”
The walk of shame.
Shame.
He’d whisper, “Guys, go home… I’m in trouble.”
She would swing.
Tears would fall from his cheek,
but he wouldn’t react.
Decades later —
“Illegal immigrants are in danger. ICE is coming to L.A. soon,”
his phone blasts while he eats in silence…
glasses at the edge of his nose,
gray hair slicked back,
brown skinned like his mother.
I look at him and think:
He should be proud of himself.
He survived.
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