Our House on Hueco

By Carlos Flores

Ten-year-old Junior is thrilled and a bit nervous about moving from an El Paso barrio to the house his father has purchased in an Anglo part of town. His mother, who speaks only Spanish, is somewhat less thrilled, especially when she finds out the family will be living in the subterráneo—a dark, unfinished basement—until the white family renting the house above moves out.As the ever-optimistic Pop works to improve his family's situation by adding an apartment to the back of the house, Junior and his little brother make friends with Tim and Kim, the children living above them. But soon tensions erupt—between Junior's mother and Tim and Kim's parents, between Pop and co-workers at his new job, and between Tim and Boogie, Junior's friend from the barrio—and these conflicts reshape Junior's relationships with family and friends, and threaten the new world his father is striving to create.

 

"This is truly an extraordinary story by a gifted writer." —Rudolfo Anaya, author of Serafina's Stories

 

"A delightful coming-of-age story by a new young adult author." —Lila Guzmán, author of Lorenzo's Secret Mission

 

"This book feels like a classic to me." —Naomi Shihab Nye, author of You and Yours

 

"Carlos Flores's insightful domestic drama is a study on what it means to be an American: love and tragedy aren't too far apart." —Ilan Stavans, author of The Hispanic Condition: The Power of a People

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carlos Flores
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781082439964

Book preview

Chapter 1 Sweet Purple

Pop steered the pickup around the corner and parked it under a big tree with branches that hung over the street and spread a cool patch of shade over the truck. My brother Rafa rose on his knees and looked out the back window at me. I stood up in the bed and was holding on to the roof of the cab with one hand, when something that smelled like a flower but was wet like a bug hit my face. I let go of the cab and stepped back. When I wiped the stuff off, my fingers turned purple. Some got on my mouth, sweet and purple like nothing I’ve ever tasted except when I eat blueberry ice cream. Eyes big as lollipops, Rafa, my five-year-old brother, looked at me, laughed, and spoke to Mom. Pop’s door, then Mom’s, creaked open, and everyone climbed out.

What did you do? asked Mom, standing on the curb in a green dress that covered her knees. Next to her stood Rafa, whose face was pretty as a girl’s, just like Mom’s but with Pop’s curly hair. Pop walked around the front of the pickup.

I pointed at the limbs. Something fell out of the tree.

Mom’s face was brown as Mexican sweetbread. "Es una mora."¹

What? I said.

"Un árbol de moras,"² she said.

Pop, a handsome man with a mustache and brown eyes that flowed like honey in the sunlight, said, "Una fruta, Junior.³ Es un árbol de fruta."⁴

I jumped and landed on the grass. We joined Pop, who stood on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips and the biggest smile I’d ever seen on his face. We were finally at our new house after years of hearing Pop’s promises and imagining a castle with a wall and maybe a moat around it like the ones in the comic books at the barbershop. But with its smooth, light brown brick walls, white wooden columns on a porch with a brick railing, and a swing hanging from two chains, the one-story house was more beautiful than a castle. It faced south, toward Mexico.

Pop turned to us and said in that weird Spanish of his, fast and all cut up like he couldn’t pronounce the words right, "¡Ésta es nuestra casa!"⁵

"¡Qué cazota!"⁶ said Mom, her hand rising to her mouth in awe. "¡Está hermosa!"⁷

The lawn was elevated a few feet above the sidewalk. Three steps connected the sidewalk to a small walkway that led to a second set of steps up to the porch. These steps weren’t like the wooden stairs that took us to our small apartment in the barrio in south El Paso. Those squeaked under our feet, groaned at night when the wind blew hard, and were dangerous to climb when it snowed. No, these steps were like those at the post office downtown, gray and solid and made to last forever. Because we had never owned a house before and weren’t from this part of the city, it was all new and strange and frightening, but I felt very proud of my father because he had kept his promise to buy us a house, a feeling as sweet and fresh as that purple stuff in my mouth.

We climbed the steps and were halfway to the porch when Mom yelled, "¡Ay Dios mío!"⁸

I stopped.

Mom’s thick, black hair flew around her angry eyes. What have you done, Rico?

Some weird-looking kids walked out of the house and stood on the porch. Their hair was red as a sunrise, their blue eyes set in faces so white they shone like onionskin, and their cheeks looked as if they had been sprayed with red chili. The girl, who barely came up to the boy’s shoulder, wore pigtails and a dress and a pink ribbon in her hair. The boy wore shorts and black shoes. Their lips were pink, and they looked like brother and sister. He looked about my age, ten, and she was maybe six or seven.

What have you done? Mom asked in Spanish, glaring at Pop. Who are these children? What are they doing here?

Patches of sweat broke out on Pop’s forehead as he took Mom by the elbow and pushed her gently toward the right side of the house. "Nena, this way. This way. Nena, por favor. I’ll explain everything. I want you to see the backyard."

Mom pushed Pop’s hand away and stopped. "¡Gringos!⁹ What are these gringos doing in our house?"

The two children did not move. Their eyes shimmered like blue flowers in sunlight. So that’s who they were—the gringos we heard so much about! Pop called them los americanos,¹⁰ but Mom called them gringos. I didn’t know what it meant, only that that was who they were, people very different from us. Mom was a Mexican, Pop a Puerto Rican—and so we were not gringos. But somehow, even then, I knew that gringos were special. They owned a lot of things, like the post office or the big stores downtown or the warehouse where Pop worked or the mountains with the white letters painted on them or new cars or TVs. We still didn’t own a TV.

We followed Mom and Pop along a dirt path between our house and the neighbor’s on the right. The houses were about ten feet apart. Like ours, the neighbor’s house had a porch with wood columns on cement ledges and a swing hanging by chains from the ceiling.

This way, Nena, said Pop, gently pulling her along by the arm. I’ll explain everything. The Joneses live there. He pointed at the house on the right.

Mom’s unhappy eyes went everywhere. So what?

They’re good neighbors.

She stared at the neighbor’s windows. How do you know?

Rafa stuck his nose in the air. I smell something, Mom.

I smell it, too, she said and slowed down. Is something burning?

I knew the smell. Tobacco.

Behind one of the windows of the neighbor’s house, a man with a cigar in his mouth stared at us. The window was lifted slightly; that’s why we could smell the smoke. He raised a hand and waved. Pop waved back. That’s Mr. Jones. He smokes cigars.

Mom glared at Mr. Jones. I thought he was a good neighbor.

Nena, come this way, said Pop with an anxious-to-please grin. I want you to see the yard.

We walked between a small screened-in laundry room with a bloated screen door on our left and an old gray wooden fence on our right. The fence separated our backyard from Mr. Jones’s. As we came around the back corner of the house, a tree with tiny fuzzy green leaves and a slender blonde trunk welcomed us. We stopped. On the other side of the house, another gray wooden fence separated us from another neighbor, and next to the fence stood an old tree with a black trunk and muscular arms that held thick clumps of green leaves. At the back of the yard stood an old red picket fence with a gate.

Trees. Trees, said Pop. Just like Puerto Rico.

But we’re not in Puerto Rico, Mom said, unimpressed.

She hated Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans because Pop always talked about going back there, especially when he got drunk.

Rafa and I ran over to the black tree. We halted before it and ran our hands along its trunk. We climbed it, first Rafa and then me, and stood on the fence. A screened-in porch at the back of the neighbor’s house snuggled among a bunch of fat green bushes, and trees with thick dark trunks shaded green grass where slivers of sunlight fell. I understood why Pop had fallen in love with the neighborhood. Unlike south El Paso, with its asphalt and concrete and trash and gangs, this was a happy place. We climbed down.

"La Sorda¹¹ lives there," said Pop.

We joined Pop. La Sorda? I asked.

An old deaf lady, he said. She’s very nice, won’t bother us. She never comes outside. He turned to Mom. Look at how big this yard is. We even have an alley. Pop walked to the red picket fence. "Nena, Nena, ven paca."

But Mom had stopped listening. Without smiling, she gazed at the trees, the dirt, the house, the dirt again, then Pop, and then the dirt once more, like she was trying to decide if this was a trap. Pop, on the other hand, talked loudly and pointed at everything, his handsome face shiny with sweat. Then he stopped before the red picket fence and looked closely at the wooden slats held together by rusted wire. Some pickets were broken, and others had fallen out.

We’ll knock this down, he said, and build a stone fence. I’ve always liked the way they build fences in El Paso, with stones from the mountain.

When he opened the gate, Rafa and I ran into the alley, a narrow dirt road. Rafa picked something out of the trash can.

This is going to be fun, I said to Rafa, but he wasn’t listening, just playing with a plastic toy airplane he had found. Then I looked at the back side of our house and saw a chimney on the roof. Pop, is that chimney real?

Pop raised his head and squinted. "Sí, claro."¹² He turned to Mom, who stood at the gate looking suspiciously at the alley. The backyard is so big that we could build a small apartment back here.

Her eyelids crinkled. An apartment? We just bought this, and already you’re thinking of building an apartment?

Pop said nothing. We walked slowly back into the yard, and Pop closed the gate behind us.

Then Mom stopped and looked at the dirt. Junior, Rafa, she said with the voice she used when we were in trouble, there are ants all over this yard. She exaggerated; there were only a few. Red ones. The worst kind. They bite hard.

Red ants poured out of a hole in the dirt. They looked like tiny red plastic-covered pills with black legs that carried them out of a small volcano in columns, marching like an army invading the yard. A red ant crawled toward my shoe.

Nena, Pop said. Come this way. He led us back around to the side of the screened-in laundry room. Come in here, he said, and opened a door with wire netting that stuck out like a belly.

We went up a cement step and inside the laundry room, where a big white washing machine with wringers sat. Another door with a brass doorknob and a glass window led inside the house. Pop asked us to move aside, knelt on the linoleum, and pulled open a door in the floor. Mom gasped. I couldn’t believe it. There was another room under the house. Pop clambered down the stairs and flicked a light switch below.

Come down here, he said, his voice echoing.

Not me, said Mom, her voice quivering like she was about to cry.

I’ll go, Mom, I said and jumped in the hole, landed on a slab of wood, and then ran down the stairs after Pop.

A lonely yellow light bulb hung from the ceiling. The room was hot and humid. Our voices spoke back to us, echoing like everything took place twice. Pop stood in the middle of the room, with its cement walls and floor and a wooden ceiling crisscrossed by pipes and beams, and he put his hands on his hips, looked around proudly, and smiled. But it felt like we were standing in a cave or a dungeon, and I still wondered why Pop brought us here. But I knew Pop. When he was ready, he’d tell us.

Nena! he shouted. Nena, come down here!

But she didn’t. So, he went back up the stairs.

Mom yelled at him, "Chale,¹³ I’m not going down there!"

After bringing down Rafa and leaving him next to me, he went back, talked to her for a long time, and then brought her slowly down the stairs by the hand.

When she entered the room, she pulled her hand away. What’s this?

It just needs to be cleaned, said Pop.

Why are we here? she asked. "This is the subterráneo."¹⁴

It won’t be for long.

She looked at the two small windows near the ceiling. Dirty and full of cobwebs, they faced the Joneses’ house. The light was gray. Long for what?

"Until the americanos leave."

She looked at the dirt on the floor. And when will they leave?

When we build the apartment.

She looked at Pop. What apartment?

The apartment I’m going to build on the back of the house.

She stared across the room, at a hole in the wall. It opened onto the crawl space beneath the house. What if a spider or a scorpion bites the children?

Pop came between her and the hole. The children will be safe. All we have to do is clean it.

Then Rafa began jumping, like he was running without moving. The airplane in his hand went up and down. Pop, Pop, Pop!

Pop turned to Rafa. What’s the matter?

Rafa kept jumping like a jumping bean. Pop, Pop, I gotta go, Pop!

Pop took him by the shoulder, led him across the room to a corner, and found an empty paint can by the stairs. He brought it over to Rafa, who stopped jumping and tucked the plane in his armpit. We looked the other way and pretended we didn’t hear the noise in the can.

Mom kept shaking her head as her eyes glanced all over the room. When Rafa finished, zipped up, and joined us, she said, Is that how the children will go to the bathroom? In a can?

The argument between Mom and Pop was unclear to me. Pop, I said, standing at his elbow, is this where we’re going to live?

The silence was long. Everyone paid attention, even Rafa, who really was too young to understand what was happening. Mom’s pretty face looked like the time she heard that her father had been killed in Mexico: she bit her lip, and her eyes grew cloudy and sad. Even Pop waited to see what he was going to say, his eyes still on the beams under the house, like he had more important things to think about than whether his plans were clear to the rest of the family.

"Hijo,"¹⁵ he said with a dead serious gaze, his neck sunburnt beneath his khaki collar, this is our house, and this is where we’re going to live.

I know, Pop, I said anxiously, but are we going to live down here?

He got on one knee and put an arm around me and then around Rafa. We are going to live here for a year. Maybe less. We are going to build an apartment in back. When the apartment is finished, we’re moving into it. Don’t let your mother scare you. Everything is going to be okay.

Okay, Pop, I said.

What about the gringos? asked Mom.

He glared at her. "The americanos are renting the house from us. He turned to me. Don’t call them gringos. They’re good people, and they’re going to help us. If it weren’t for them, we couldn’t afford to live in this house."

Mom, her eyes flying about, yelled, Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning what you wanted to do?

"Coño,¹⁶ if I’d told you the truth, he replied, you’d never have signed the contract. Sometimes it’s necessary to hide the truth if you want to do great things."

Have we struggled almost ten years since you got out of the army so we could live in a hole? she said. You’re crazy.

Pop stood up, and his eyes went back to doing what they had been doing—looking at every inch of the belly of the house. He was probably thinking about how to get plumbing in the subterráneo so that we didn’t have to go to the bathroom in a can or about how he was going to crawl under the house and kill the spiders and scorpions.

I may be crazy, he said, "but my children are not going to live in a dump. I cannot clean a barrio of animals worse than spiders or scorpions, but I can clean this subterráneo. Then he laid his hand on my shoulder, heavy and strong with fingers big as steel bolts. Your mother and I have to talk, Junior. You and Rafa go play outside."

I dragged Rafa up the stairs. We jumped into the sunlight and ran to the front of the house, where we had seen the two red-haired kids. But they were gone, probably back inside and watching TV; voices from a TV came through the screen door.

We jumped and landed on the sidewalk under the big fruit tree, its old gray trunk hard and rough like the backs of the alligators in the plaza downtown. We walked to the curb on Hueco Street and looked at the quiet little intersection. North of us, Pershing Drive had a lot of traffic. We could hear the cars from where we stood. Cebada came down from Pershing, past the Joneses’ to Hueco; then it made a right and a quick left and headed south between the church and the park to Montana, which also had a lot of traffic.

On the corner across the street stood a long white church with a sharp roof and blue windows on the sides, very different from the church Mom took us to in south El Paso, where ten years ago, in 1944, Mom and Pop got married, and from the other church in Juárez, where Mom loved to take us when we visited her family. Those churches were big and inside very quiet, with candles burning and statues of angels, saints, the Holy Family, and God. This church probably belonged to the hallelujahs Mom had told us about. The hallelujahs weren’t Catholics like us; they were always saying, Hallelujah!

My eyes wandered from the church, across Cebada to the trees. Look at that park, I said to Rafa. And those trees.

Some of the trees were fat and short, some skinny, others tall and strong. There were so many places to hide we could play guns or pirates all we wanted without worrying whether a car might run over us.

A screen door slammed. Voices rolled from the porch and bounced until I felt the kids standing on the steps behind us. I heard them breathing but didn’t turn around because I didn’t know what to say.

I’m Tim, said the boy.

We turned around. They stood at the top of the stairs, side by side, skinny white legs and skinny white arms. The girl cradled a doll in her arms.

I’m Kim, she said, her voice sweet as ice cream. And this is Molly.

Molly looked like the baby Jesus at church, with peach-colored plastic arms and legs and big blue eyes that flapped open when it sat up. But this doll was a baby girl, wearing a pink dress and shiny black shoes. Her hair was blonde.

I’m Junior, I said, finding it hard to talk. This is Rafa.

Rafa raised the airplane in his hand. Hi.

You like airplanes? asked Tim.

Rafa nodded and twirled a propeller.

Tim climbed down the steps. That one used to be mine. But you can have it. Dad bought me a new one. Then he turned to me. What’s that on your face?

The tree dropped some stuff on me, I said.

Tim’s voice was clear and sweet like a clarinet. It’s a mulberry tree.

"My mother says it’s a mora."

What?

I didn’t know how else to say it. "A mora tree."

Tim glanced at the tree and then at me. What’s that?

Then I remembered what Pop had said. A fruit tree.

Suddenly, Tim’s face lit up. Want to play?

I glanced at Rafa, and he shrugged. So, we climbed the steps to the porch. Standing close to the girl, I got used to her red hair and freckles and decided she was very pretty. Shorter than Tim or me but taller than Rafa, she had slender arms and legs. She climbed on the swing with Molly and smiled shyly. She looked like a girl I’d seen in a magazine at the barbershop.

A woman inside the house—I guessed it was their mother—said, Kim, come here, and Kim slid off the swing and opened the screen door. I couldn’t believe what I saw. The living room floor was made of shiny dark brown wood, and in the wall facing Mr. Jones’s house stood a fireplace with some logs in it, though they weren’t burning. A glass-covered cabinet held books and magazines. A TV spoke, with tiny people talking and moving around on a black and white screen. A nice long sofa stood next to a rocking chair. In the dining room beyond, shiny wooden legs held up a table covered with a white tablecloth. I couldn’t believe this house was ours. Pop must be lying. I could see why Mom was so upset.

Tim sat on the swing and held a chain with his hand. Are you going to live in our house?

I didn’t know what to say. They wanted to be friends and had asked us to play with them, but Mom’s voice kept making a lot of noise in my head: "Gringos! What are these gringos doing in our house?"

But Pop was right, and Mom was wrong: Sometimes we must hide the truth to do great things.

Pop knew more than Mom because he wasn’t from here. He had to be smart because he had come from a long way off, from Puerto Rico, an island in the Caribbean, on a ship, on his own. First, he went to New York, where he washed dishes at a Howard Johnson’s, and then he joined the army and came here. That’s when he and Mom met on the trolley car. When he got discharged, he washed toilets in bars and restaurants downtown until his friend, Chuy, found him a job at the warehouse.

I didn’t know if Puerto Ricans were smarter than Mexicans, but I knew that Pop was very smart. Mom was sweet and loving and kind, but she knew nothing about buying houses or fixing them or moving heavy boxes with a machine at the warehouse where Pop worked. She was from Juárez, and she had only worked as a maid. She never went anywhere on her own, and after she married Pop, she didn’t work as a maid anymore. But she was a great mother, the one who protected us when Pop drank too much with his friends and came home knocking down everything and screaming that he hated the desert and Mexicans and wanted to go back to Puerto Rico. If it weren’t for Mom, Pop never would have bought this house. He would already have gone back to Puerto Rico.

So, I said to Tim, who sat on the swing, his blue eyes big as pieces of the desert sky. "We’re going to live in the subterráneo."

What’s that?

The basement.

Downstairs? Tim made an ugly face. What an awful place. It’s like a dungeon.

Chills went up and down my body like someone had dumped ice-cold water on me. My face grew hot, my tongue was hard and dry as stone in the hot sun, and my stomach felt queasy. I didn’t know what to say. Then I heard Pop’s voice. I couldn’t see him or Mom, but it sounded like they were walking back, still arguing in Spanish.

It’s a great idea, he said. Just be patient. You’ll see. It’ll all work out. This is the way Americans make money.

"Bueno, she said, you did a clever thing, but why did you have to rent to these people?"

Then they stopped and lowered their voices.

Standing on the swing, Rafa held the chain with one hand and flew the airplane with the other.

Tim slid from the swing and stood in front of me. Is something wrong?

I still couldn’t speak, as if