Danielle Reyes

Professor Sidibe

Enw 210

418/19

                                           “flare gun”

I have  a mix feelings for cars, great for us bad for the earth. As a kid, the car was the best thing. Any vehicle was the best cause it meant out of the house and go somewhere new. My parents were always very protective of us (still are) so that meant not hanging out with any friends after school, or going to the bodega by yourself no matter how badly the house needs toilet paper. It’s   just the way how I was raised, it’s honestly a good thing I like my siblings cause god knows what would have happened to me if I didn’t like the people. One person I made a connection with is my father. He is an average sized man, BALD, eyes that when he grins the crow’s feet and laugh lines have nowhere to hide yet somehow he doesn’t look anything older than 40. A scruffy beard filled with grays and bald patches. And a Niño de jesùs necklace present he has  around his neck that has been on since the fourth grade that my little sister gave to him. This is a man that most would have wanted to have as their own father, a man that when spoken about there’s nothing but good things to say. I for one have as well fallen for this man’s charm, but in an unconditional love type of way not in a Sigmund Freud type of way. He is to me the way all men should be. He was also my driver for all my life whether my mother was in the car or someone else when we were in the car he always wanted to drive.

There’s never a silent moment in a car with my father. Whether it is him telling old stories of when he was younger in America, the Dominican Republic, of his siblings the car was just our talk time. He started this cycle when I was about five years old. Back then I would try to stay up as long as i could with my dad in car rides because he always ended up having to be in silence because the rest of my siblings had fallen asleep. He would get so happy to see me awake when he would turn around to check on us on red lights to make sure we weren’t breaking our necks sleeping. His first story that i could remember was while we were on a grocery run for the bodega he had around Yankee stadium. It was a  huge rusty smoke colored toyota van, with that scratchy television static colored rug you would see at a doctors office. The song that was playing was Beso a Beso by Tono Rosario “Chula, you know that you used to sing this song when you were two. At the top of your lungs, you’d be like BECHU a BECHUO ME AMORER DE TI . I think you knew more Spanish then you do now” which back then I would just laugh and then play a round of I spy with my younger sister. My dad, he kept recalling the times when we used to sing the songs or try to pronounce the words but it was honestly the sign of how unaware of our culture I was till the age of 13. And I don’t mean the historical facts, I mean the basic survival skills which is the language. I was singing Zacharias and Anthony Santos songs since I was three but half of the time I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. Not only was my father someone who I had a very close relationship with but also the figure of my culture for me as a child since my mother spent most of her time at work. His stories when i was around this age would always be of when he was my age. In how he used to sell bread with this local boy every Sunday, or how he would ride horses in San Francisco to get to the river and back in time to do some farm work. He created this picture of a land in which i felt free, a land where I would dream about sleeping in the land where “dreams come true”. As I ate up these car filling stories I put my father’s voice on a pedestal like no other, his podium made of steel backed by a lifetime’s worth of support and a coat of marble that dominates the eye.

I think it was around the age of  fifteen that I started to realize this attraction to both male and females( and like can you blame me have you seen Zendaya and Kim Taehyung like hello!)  We were passing by cemetery driving down the highway late on a winter night in my dad Toyota black minivan . so while laying my head on its creme gray chair  while la mega was on talking about how this celebrity had come out as gay. One of the announcers said their opinion on how he was against that way of living and I said: “that’s not right!”. It got incredibly quiet in the car, my dad lowered the thumping volume of the radio and exhaled. And when a Spanish man puts down la mega during the bachata remix hour it’s serious. “Daniela….there was once this old man who lived in the same building as me. Every night that I came back home drunk and ended up sleeping on the stairwell he would wake me up with a can of Sprite with a cup of coffee in the other. He was my neighbor so I knew him well. Until one night I saw a man coming out of his house and they kissed. When I tell you I was livid, that I had let a faggot into my home, into my life i went straight to my house and avoided him the best I could. Pero las cosas que queremos evitar más son las que aparecen primero. I was hungover again and again and each time he would still come no matter how much I spat and screamed at him. Until one day I asked him ‘why do you still treat me like this, I don’t like ya kind.’ and all he did was laugh and said ‘Mijo, si odiara a todos los que no me aceptaron, mi propio padre no tendría una casa para vivir en Puerto Rico … eres un buen niño Danny y todavía creo que lo eres.’ and he just walked away smiling. Honestly, he’s the reason why I’m okay with them, he showed me a different side and I respected him and enjoyed his company until he died. That’s why I don’t mind that you have friends that are gay i’ll respect them and treat them like any other with open arms.” Now when I tell you I was beaming in that backseat,  I was so happy that my father felt this way. That this man’s image just kept shining more and more as I grew up. That was until he said “ But if any of you turned out like that I wouldn’t know what to do, ill fucking… I wouldn’t know” we were officially parked in front of my house but it felt like we just crashed. It honestly felt like he knew, like he stated that sentence in a way that the sound could hit me in every direction like a caves echo. And I didn’t say anything we just sat there until my little sister said ‘can we leave now I need to go pee”

 it was the first time that I felt my dad might actually end up not loving me, and I just sat there watching. Because that’s what I was taught to do,  that me as a daughter, a women, should sit there and listen and not vocally oppose. And I kept that concern bottled up from not only my father but everyone. For about two years I kept this part of me inside me like I was smuggling a gun. And this worry of me not being accepted by my parents, my culture, really messed with my head as you would think. I blame it for me looking twenty-five when i’m only twenty with late nights up . I blame it for the loss of time and happiness throughout my senior year and freshman year of college. I blame “it” when its actually me. Understanding this “it”  was difficult because there was nothing not only in my household but in my family like this to ever happen. It’s not like movies or t.v shows that you just know or that people can tell. Or that miraculously one day you meet the right person who will “show you the way” whatever that means. This “it’, that weighed like a gun was something i saw kill the tie between me and my dad with just one twitch on the trigger. Yes I had friends who where out but not to their parents,and I would ask how they can do it and it was “I’m not close to my parents so it’s pretty easy.” And thats why its hard, to think that this man who carries you on his  shoulders, or hugs you just at the right time without you even saying anything. The person who introduced your favorite foods and taught you how to make them.

But it did happen, well not entirely. I didn’t come out to my dad or go out and started dating girls and boys left and right. But my finger cocked the trigger, it was in my mother’s car : a small blue honda with heated seats that helped against the cold winds that where moving the car. Me and my dad came a little earlier because the hospital she works at is towards the heights so the traffic is always a mess, or as my dad would say “  QUE NO SABEN MANEJAR ESTOS CARA CULO”. We were actually talking about my sister the one who wanted to leave to go pee in the other car, she was twelve at the time with a new phone and a new obsession. She was very secretive, which my parents hate so they did what all parents do take away the phone and try to read the messages. What they found they didn’t like. “ i knew that anabelle girl was bad new, ella tiene la cara de un diabla. You know what i found on her phone… she-she wrote a love letter and sent it to gabriela asking for advice if it was good enough to give to ana. Daniela she’s only twelve.” throughout the whole conversation he’s clenching his fist as if anabelle was some lord that came to a peasant house and took my sister by force to marry despite my dad saying no. like yeah she was a bitch, but she didn’t force my sister to like her in a romantic way. And you can see the scornful disappointment in his eyes, lip turned downward, eyebrows scrunched. And  he just kept going on and on on how he shouldn’t have sent her to an all girl school and that we should’ve took her to church more; on how they messed up. He just went on and on that i couldn’t hear anymore, i couldn’t stay quite this time. So i interrupted him ,“papi do you hear yourself right now, not only do you not know what she’s feeling but your criticizing her as if she’s doing drugs and stealing money. Your speaking of this girl, your daughter ! as if she had no relation to the same girl you loved before you saw the text. Do you know how that would make her feel! Do you know how that would make me feel, how its making me feel. To hear this coming out of your mouth with the voice you say you love us with since we were kids. Do you know the scenarios that makes me think of , us leaving the house not because it’s time for us to leave but because you kicked us out. You not wanting to see us nor speak. And you know what goes for you goes for mommy and vise versa. I want to know why. Why is this what causes to end he forever that you promised us.”  I would have said more but tears were building up and my father’s silence was uncharted waters. I looked at him and he no longer looked disappointed but sad , and we just sat there in silence as i tried to silently recollect myself as he sat there with his eyes towards the center of the wheel

“ that’s not what i mean chula, you know i wouldn’t do any of that or feel that type of way.’

“But you talk like you do papi or will , and it’s scary… to think about”

We didn’t continue the conversation because my mom came in the car. But those ten minutes in that car took a lot. That secrete gun became  a flare gun once i shot it. Upwards my father’s pedestal and illuminating his face , showing my concern and it reached him. At the time what i focused on the most was how he reacted, dissecting and preserving  his words again like i did as a child . But what i didn’t realize was that my words were the ones that changed him that day.

And i think it allowed me not only to better my relationship with my dad in being able to have conversation back and forth, but allow me to push forward in the ability to speak for myself. So as i go with my dad to manhattan on the weekends to visit my mama i smile with my hand intertwining with the running wind i think of the future conversations well have in the car and hopefully ill be the one driving.