Rott of Dallas

By Ricardo Ortiz

Before even Ricky Hernandez had a taste of his dream of becoming a pro baseball player, he insisted to reunite with his brother Anthony first. The brothers, separated by their parents’ divorce, have not seen or spoken to each other for ten years, which had Ricky on an intense journey looking for him among the bad influences of the ghetto in Dallas where he left and had forgotten about him.
Ricky had before the week ended when he arrived at his old hometown to look for Anthony before he had to move on with his baseball career, and each day he took advantage and headed out looking for him. Getting closer and closer to finding him by hearing rumors and going through trouble, Ricky finally found Anthony. The brothers reunited, and truth was said, as well as things far beyond the truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796065435

Book preview

Characters

Ricky

Anthony—Rott

Marquise—Ricky’s best friend

Maria—mother

Father

Christian—old, longtime friend of Anthony and Ricky

Pablo, Jesus, and Valentin—the delinquents

1

The neighborhood

I grew up as a Chicano kid in the bad suburbs of North Dallas. I say bad suburbs because of the way my neighborhood was set up. Starting with the ghetto, there are about four blocks with small shotgun houses with little kids always playing on the street as if the lady who lived in a shoe had neighbors just like her.

The seventh block was where I stayed with my family along with other middle-class families. The householders there were mostly service contractors or small-business owners like my neighbors, one of them being owner of a bounce-house renting business and a dog breeder that had a whole backyard of Rottweilers or, as we called them, Rotts.

Finally, the last blocks next to ours were for the white and the richest with brand-new glamorous mansions owned by lawyers, doctors—well, you know, the suit-and-tie people.

Even though we were all apart in class and distance, we all had something in common: that is, crime that was always happening everywhere, because of the low-class stealing from the people above them. Every day, there would be shootings that could be heard from the ghetto to my house. Everything that happened in the ghetto had some type of effect with everybody else, like a rotten apple rotting the other fruits around it. I’ve always felt as if the city planned our neighborhood living, like a reality show on MTV, but instead of strangers, there is the lower, middle, and upper class living under the same roof.

2

The Hernandezes

My family and I were the Hernandezes, same as dozens of other Mexican families in the neighborhood. Both of my parents’ origins are the same place in Mexico, Guanajuato, the state that is the center and heart of the country. My mom used to tell me that the neighborhood we lived in was so much like the one she and dad grew up in, with a section that is full of delinquents, where my father grew up in, and then hers, where it was just peaceful and quiet, but rather in a desert-country-like environment. She also told me how she met my father; he was a gangster that passed most of his time drinking with the rest of his gang in the streets and was involved in selling drugs. One day, my dad gazed upon my mother for the first time as she was leaving school and fell in love, going crazy for her. My mother, on the other hand, always rejected him as she was the complete opposite: she was a good girl who always went to church and obeyed every single rule, as she still was making me and Anthony pray every single night before going to bed. My dad didn’t give up and continued trying to win over my mother’s heart until he asked her what he must do to have her. My mother said it to him straight—that he must change his whole way of living for her. She asked for the impossible.

It is considered impossible for any men or women to change someone’s way of living, because it is like wanting to change their destiny.

For my dad, he had to leave the gang life and had to start fresh; it was dangerous, but he changed himself for my mother. He avoided any threats from the gang by disappearing with my mother, moving to the United States as illegal immigrants.

Supposedly, my father changed and was a whole new person; to me and Anthony, he always had been very mean. My mother thinks the same and that he is acting different more and more every year; she says it was when we turned old enough to understand what we were doing that he started to act different.

My conclusion about his behavior was that he was jealous of the American life we were born into, and he hated so much how we were not suffering like he did is what my dad would always say to us. He treated us so badly by beating us over everything, like one day I asked him for help with homework and he reluctantly agreed, hitting me each time I said the wrong answer.

What do you learn in school then? he would yell. I didn’t even make it to the grade you are in right now, and I knew!

I cried, and he would swing a punch once again.

What you crying for? If you cry, I’ma continue to hit you! he shouted, but I did continue to cry, on the inside regretting asking him for help.

One time, it went even worse for Anthony when my father grabbed him by the head and shoved it against the wall. My father made such a huge cut on Anthony’s head that he had to take him to the hospital to have it stitched up. I don’t remember having an actual conversation with him but the two-hour-long lectures he would always give us every day; he would give us so many lectures and say it was for our good, but I felt that he was just disappointed at us. One night, he came home from work and called me and Anthony out of our rooms; he asked us what we wanted to be in the future, and I said a pilot and my brother said a firefighter. The only reason he asked us was to break our dreams, to say that it was a waste of our time to pursue our dreams, because we would just be dirty wetbacks just like the rest of our race. My father was a bad person, and I wouldn’t want to be alone with him anywhere.

My mother, on the other hand, was the one Anthony and I depended on for help. She always protected us from our father as much as she could and was the only real parent we had. As a stay-at-home mom, she always protected us and complied with our cravings and wants. We had a good relationship with our mother, enjoying each other’s company, laughing, and actually loving.

Last in the family was my brother, who was my best friend. Anthony, who was a year older than me, taught me everything he knew. The main thing my brother taught me was to have actual fun, something I wouldn’t get at home with our father around. One of the ways he taught me of having fun is through competing, and that is what he and I always did with each other, whether it was having to do everything as a race, or just out of nowhere wrestling. The best way of competing Anthony taught me was playing the sport of baseball along with our friend Christian.

Christian was one of the kids that lived in the ghetto that we knew, because of school. He was such a great friend, but our mother thought differently since she wanted us to keep away from that part of the neighborhood. We continued to be friends though, behind our mother’s back. It worked just perfect: him being the catcher, Anthony the pitcher, and me as the batter.

Every day was the same: Anthony and I walked to the end of our neighborhood to meet up with Christian to play baseball. Every time we waited for him, we were entertained by the view of a classic 1964 Chevrolet Impala.

When I grow up, I’ma have a car just like that one, but green, Anthony said.

Green? Why green? I asked.

Because it’s the color of the tallest building of Dallas!

Well, I wouldn’t choose green. I would pick blue for it.

Well, that’s if you’re able to get the car, but even if you do, I’ll be the first to have it!

No, you won’t, I will! And you’re going to have to get another car!

Is that a bet? Anthony questioned.

Yes! Yes, it is! I acknowledged.

Christian finally would then show himself with his duffle bag filled with his protective catcher’s equipment.

All right, let’s go, guys! Christian would say.

And we headed off to the upper-class streets to play. We didn’t have a baseball field nearby, so we used the rich people’s massive streets. We couldn’t play at Christian’s neighborhood, because of how dangerous it was and because of my mother not wanting me and Anthony around there. The streets of our middle-class home were unplayable because of how crowded it was with vehicles, so it was out of the question of being an option. My mom was the one who decided on the upper-class section to be our baseball field.

Y’all go play over at the big houses, because unlike here if you break a window or anything, over there, they won’t care. They’ll just easily buy another one, she said.

So that was where we went every day to play baseball. We used two stoned mailboxes to indicate first and third base and then two of the painted strips on the surface of the street for second and home. It was basically all set up; every one of us took our position to practice what we wanted to do.

Ricky, hurry up so I can strike you out already, Anthony said.

Whatever, I groaned, getting the baseball bat.

Come on, guys. Why y’all have to take everything as a competition even in practice? Christian complained.

Christian, just catch me my pitches, because I’m going to give you a good practice on your framing with the slider that I finally found out how to throw.

You really do know how to throw it now?

Yes, now both of y’all get ready.

I was ready with the bat in hand, and Anthony threw the first pitch straight into Christian’s mitt. That new slider of his had fooled me.

Yeah! I got you good, didn’t I, Ricky? Anthony smirked.

Whatever—come on, you still haven’t struck me out yet, I said. I bet you can’t anyways.

Oh, it’s on!

We had about five balls in total, and every time we ran out, we would all go hunting for them after I hit or fouled them off. We went chasing after the balls about twelve times, and Anthony was able to strike me out maybe two times.

All right, last at bat before we go home this the one that counts and matters over all the other ones, Anthony suggested.

He first threw his slider, which caught me slacking, making me just look at it passing in front of me as a strike. He threw it again for the second time, and I hit it, making it soar over three houses in front of a door, but it was just a foul. I’d seen the look on Anthony’s face; he had confidence in himself after the ball landed in our imaginary field when it was the second strike.

Before we even knew the update of the count, before Anthony delivered the pitch in the middle of his stride, we were interrupted. The three delinquents from Christian’s neighborhood, Pablo, Jesus, and Valentin, for some reason, had found us.

What’s up? Let us play! Pablo, the oldest, said.

My mom always warned me and Anthony about those three, of how very bad kids they were—that they were gangsters. All three of them stopped going to school. They might have just got done stealing from one of the mansions, I thought.

Come on, Anthony. I’ll give you a dollar. Valentin laughed along with the other two, taking out his wad of cash, the youngest maybe a year younger than me, a fourth grader.

No, you can’t. We were just finishing, I said.

Shut up. We weren’t asking you! Jesus said, the middle kid of the group, the same age as Anthony. We were asking Anthony.

Yeah, here you go. Anthony tossed