Cuento de Mi Id

“The Eyes of a Revolutionary”

Never trust a revolutionary, my father used to say. You have only to look into their eyes to see what they really are. For their eyes aren't normal eyes. And they look right through you as if you weren't really human. Which readily explains the things they say. And the things they do.

I never laughed at my father when he said this. I could tell by the expression in his own eyes that he was serious about this. He would joke about a lot of things but never this subject. He never told me how he knew all this. Did he read from a book somewhere or did he learn it from someone who had lived through the last revolution in his homeland? He never said. But each time he told it to me, he had the air of someone revealing a great truth.

And, of course, he never told me in front of anyone else. Not even my mother.

***********************************************************

Five years into the War and my mother and I were staying at her mother's house. The news was always on and my mother was tired of always having to work two jobs. We had not seen my father in ages but my mother still jumped when the phone rang. Her mother always scolded us whenever we got home late but my mother ignored her. And tried to ignore the black sedan parked outside across the street...

***********************************************************

My father used to tell me about the old woman he knew back in his hometown. How contemptuous she had been of the last batch of revolutionaries to ride through that town and how much she liked to compare them to the men in uniform that she had known in her youth.

“The French, you see, now they knew something about uniforms. But today's bunch... They're little more than barbarians. How awful!”

My father was home early because the boss had decided to let him go. He had been working at the office six months -- longer than some of his Anglo co-workers -- but in the end, they let him go.

My mother asked him in whispers what he will do next.

“Don't worry, mi amor,” he said. "I'll find something.”

“But if you don't...”

“If I don't, we'll move.”

“And if you still don't find something...”

“Then we'll move again.”

Five years later, my father took us both aside and said that the two of us were going back to Detroit to live with my mother's mother. My father would follow but not for a long time. In the meantime we were not to mention his name or speculate where he might be. He made us both swear that we would never tell anyone about him.

“If anyone asks about me,” he said, “You don't know. If anyone claims to know something about me, you don't know. As far as you know, I went away one day and did not come back. Believe me, mijo, as much as I would like to pretend otherwise, it's better this way.”

He hugged both of us quite strongly and then left. I have not seen him in the flesh since then.

***********************************************************

My grandmother was talking about the news again but my mother would not listen. “Shut it off, mother,” she said. “It's almost time to eat.”

“Why do they do it?" my grandmother asked. “Why do they act like such ingrates? Don't those people understand the concept of loyalty?”

My mother seemed on the verge of saying something but instead she cleared her throat and said, “Loyalty is a two-way street, mother.” Then she fell silent as if she had accidentally confessed something.

Outside across the street, a black sedan was still waiting. Every so often, it drove off, only to be replaced almost immediately by a vehicle of a similar color. What the men in the car were waiting for, my mother would not say. As far as she was concerned, the sedan did not even exist.

***********************************************************

When my father was still living with us, he used to teach me English using flash cards. He would write down English words and sentences and then teach me to say them over and over again until l could say them in my sleep. He was never prouder till the day came when I no longer spoke with an accent.

He used to go to old book stores throughout the city and buy books about the last revolution in his homeland. He often said that he preferred the books that were written by Americans because the books written by people of his homeland tended to be more personality-oriented. Americans were not always as objective about the revolution as my father would like, but at least they tended to focus more on what actually happened as opposed to what so-and-so did or said. “Of course, the way things are going in this country,” he would sometimes joke, “American history books will someday be the same way. But hopefully neither you nor I will be around when that happens.”

***********************************************************

Last night there was a knock on the door.

A man in a black raincoat said we would have to leave. There had been an incident at the local nuclear plant and the entire neighborhood was being evacuated.

“I just knew they should have dealt with those people while they had the chance,” said my grandmother.

My mother just held her breath and fingered her rosary.

As we packed up to leave, I noticed that the black sedan was no longer across the street. Nor was there any car in its place. I finished packing my suitcase and took it out to my grandparents' car.

My grandmother was looking worriedly toward the north -- in the direction of the fallen power plant.

My mother as always looked in all directions.

Then she got into the back seat beside me and hugged me.

She said something in Spanish but her voice was so low that I could not hear her.

The next day, after we entered the relocation camp, my grandparents bought a newspaper. On the cover was a sketch of a man who looked like my father. But it could not have been my father for my father's eyes were brown and the man in the sketch had black irises. More to the point, the eyes in the newspaper sketch seemed to look right through me. Just like the eyes that my father had once described. The eyes of a revolutionary.