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Chapters (23)
  1. Cover
  2. AMERICAN SON
  3. AMERICAN SON
  4. Dedication
  5. Copyright
  6. Contents
  7. AMERICAN SON
  8. PART ONE
  9. Balikbayan
  10. Chapter One
  11. Chapter Two
  12. PART TWO
  13. AMERICAN SON
  14. Chapter One
  15. Chapter Two
  16. Chapter Three
  17. PART THREE
  18. A Dirty Penance
  19. Chapter One
  20. Chapter Two
  21. Chapter Three
  22. Chapter Four
  23. Acknowledgements

Oh that’s okay, he says. We had pizza at a client’s.

A client made you pizza?

He pauses. It was takeout, he says. Anyway, we sort of had to eat it.

She appears not to believe him. He pauses there, uncomfortable for a moment, then walks into the other room, leaving me with her, and it seems too awkward to follow him. She says nothing to me. I think about saying something or taking a piece of the food—though I am not hungry—but I do not and finally she gets up and wraps it and walks past me and goes into the other room.

Chapter Two

I

Ever since we got back from Oregon I have not seen too much of Mom. She has always worked sixty hours at a department store’s shoe section and recently she has taken a second job looking after an invalid Jewish lady in the Hollywood Hills. The woman believes her dead husband comes back to visit her, after dark, which scares Mom, but she needs the money. She goes there most evenings and does not always come back to cook us dinner. Sometimes she will even stay the night. When she does come home she will wander about the house, and will not say a word or even glance at me. Lately I have taken to walking around the neighborhood on days she is home or during the hours when I think she might get back, so I will not be around for her to ignore me.

On Sunday mornings, though, we go to church together. Tomas used to drive us in the Oldsmobile, but nowadays he refuses to go. He says he is still mad at the priest for kicking him out of Saint Dominic’s, though probably he is angry about his car and simply making a point. Sometimes I think about telling him what happened in Oregon—how hard things are on Mom—so he will treat her more considerately, like he used to, but I cannot get myself to do it. When Mom and I go to church without him she sits in the passenger seat while I drive her over in her old Tercel. The trunk has no lock because she did not replace it after somebody broke in, and there is a hole in the floor beneath the accelerator, where wind seeps up around my bare ankles. We go early so she can sit up near the altar, and I do not complain like I used to; when she stays after Mass to pray I no longer point out that she is the only person left, and instead of waiting impatiently outside, I now kneel in the pew next to her.