—Leave the kid alone, Don Chan pleaded.

—C‘mon, Bobby, show me what kind of son I raised. Get up, Santo said, pulling Bobby up from the ground. Dallas laughed, calling Bobby a wuss.

Bobby didn‘t fight back. He didn‘t want to hit anyone. He was more afraid of the anger he kept tucked deep down inside him. What if he let it all out, could he kill someone? Could something happen between him and his father that he would regret? He didn‘t want to go there, and because he didn‘t want to go there, he tried to block Santo‘s badgering from his mind. Bobby had his head tipped low, flared his nose as if smoke was coming out of him.

—Yeah, c‘mon, Bobby, I‘ll be easy on you, Dallas said. She was bouncing around like the boxers do on TV. —C‘mon, wuss, she yelled to rile up a real fight. Rooting for a bigger battle, another knockout, so she could count backward again. But before Bobby could be knocked out again, Esperanza started yelling.

—What did I say about fighting in the house? You, Santo, are raising our children to be barbarians.

—I‘m teaching them to defend themselves.

—I‘m so sorry, mijo, Don Chan said, looking at Bobby, a younger version of Santo. What did I do to you?

—You stay out of it, Santo yelled back at his father. Santo had found a numbness to get through his thirteen-hour workdays before his father‘s arrival. He had shut down all the longing for a different life. He accepted the sacrifice to work for his children. But then his father was making it difficult for Santo to do his shifts day after day. How did ten years go by and he still didn‘t own much more than his old beat-up car? And then Esperanza gave him a hard time about the piano. What had he asked from her? Damn her, damn his father. Damn his ungrateful children.

—Vete a la mierda, Don Chan said, hurt and confused. He didn‘t ask to come to Nueva York. He left for the bedroom and slammed the door behind him.

—If I left them up to you, they‘d still be sucking on your tit, Santo told Esperanza.

—Ay, Santo, don‘t go there in front of the children, please.

—How is he going to survive in this city if he lets some punk take his shoes?

Bobby leaned against the shelves stuffed with magazines and the television, stereo, and speakers.

—Look what you did to pobre Bobby. He returns home from violence on the street and you have violence in this house. Do you think that‘s good for the boy, Santo? What have we talked about? To be different, to be decent, to have children who will grow up to be good people and get good jobs. We don‘t want them to become tigres, fighting like cats on the street. No, Santo. Not my Bobby.

—We might want something, Esperanza, but the world wants something else. I‘m just saying that it don‘t matter how good we are, you go out in the world and people will try to beat you up and take everything you got. I want them to learn how to defend themselves.