Chuy Renteria - We Heard It When We Were Young

WE HEARD IT WHEN WE WERE YOUNG

WE HEARD IT WHEN WE WERE YOUNG

Chuy Renteria

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS

IOWA CITY

University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242

Copyright 2021 by Chuy Renteria

www.uipress.uiowa.edu

Printed in the United States of America

Cover design by Kimberly Glyder; text design by April Leidig

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. All reasonable steps have been taken to contact copyright holders of material used in this book. The publisher would be pleased to make suitable arrangements with any whom it has not been possible to reach.

Printed on acid-free paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Renteria, Chuy, 1985 author.

Title: We Heard It When We Were Young / by Chuy Renteria.

Description: Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2021007088 (print) | LCCN 2021007089 (ebook) | ISBN 9781609388058 (paperback) | ISBN 9781609388065 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Renteria, Chuy, 1985Childhood and youth. | Mexican American youthIowaWest LibertyBiography. | Children of ImmigrantsIowaWest LibertyBiography. | Mexican AmericansIowaWest LibertySocial conditions. | West Liberty (Iowa)Biography. | West Liberty (Iowa)Ethnic relations.

Classification: LCC F629.W4464 R46 2021 (print) | LCC F629.W4464 (ebook) | DDC 977.7/68dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007088

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007089

To Stephanie Cromer and Carol Clark

Years ago you saw it in me, even before I saw it myself

CONTENTS

THE TALES IN THIS book reflect the authors recollection of events. Dialogue has been recreated from memory. Some events have been remixed and rearranged for the sake of clarity and pacing. Some names and identifying details have been changed throughout for varying reasons deemed by the author. The author maintains that the underlying spirit of the events is true. Chances are the parts that seem the most unbelievable are the most real. Just ask anyone from Wes Lib.

West Liberty as it appeared to me while growing up. Illustration by Zo Woodworth.

PROLOGUE

BY THE TIME I noticed someone was talking to me, he had repeated himself a few times. His voice invaded my thoughts, like someone turning the dial on a radio until words creep up from the static. Hey. Little Mexican. Hey, Im talking to you, motherfucker. You little fucking Mexican.

My daydreams of Nickelodeon shows and video games dissipated. It was the second Mexican that snapped me out of my thoughts. It had so much acid and hate in it, this word that was a statement of who I was. A qualifier. An identity. A thing for a man to belt out at a child walking home from school. I was confused at first. Was someone talking to me? All sense of the childhood I had known before this changed as I turned and saw the couple walking behind me.

They were high school kids. A man and a woman, for all intents and purposes. They were tall like how all high schoolers are tall when youre a kid. It was only for an instant when I turned around and saw them, but the look on the mans face has stayed with me more than twenty years later. He was blond with the fuzz of a mustache that teenaged boys try to grow as a badge of honor. His hair was long and pulled back, like a hockey player before he puts on his helmet. The woman had her arms entwined in the mans as they stepped in pace behind me. Yeah, got your attention, huh, faggot? Im talking to you, you little fucking spic. You goddamn wetback. Who do you think you are, walking and looking back at me like you own this sidewalk?

I remember his eyes. The way his brows furrowed in anger as he spat out his hate. I was in fifth grade, around age ten or eleven. But I recall feeling so much younger. I remember this incident as a little boy. As an infant. I mull over this incident at night. In walks and car rides. In my memories I envision a child walking on two little legs, which I very much was, but it caught me off guard to realize I was already in fifth grade when this incident happened. Maybe I remember myself as being so young because I felt so powerless. To this day his hate distorts this memory. The memory of a child who doesnt yet know what it feels like to be dehumanized.

But it was his girlfriend who brought about the worst of it. She tightened her arms around the man. I dont remember her features, only her hands as they applied pressure to the denim sleeve of the man beside her. She said his name but Ive lost it. Come on, leave him alone, she said in a voice that wasnt so much pleading as it was singsongy annoyance that she had to temper her boyfriend. Hes only a kid.

At this time I turned away from the couple. Everything was on fire. My senses were reduced to base-level manifestations. Get out of here. Tighten your grip around the straps of your backpack and quicken your steps before things get worse. Curl up in a ball as you walk. Steel yourself for more. The mans words projected across the sidewalk, into my ears and echoing for all of time. No, that is the goddamn point. Thats when the hell they need to hear it. Dont you get it? These little spics need to hear this. They need to hear it young. And then he laughed.

I heard him say it and will never forget the words. I said nothing as I increased my distance from the couple. The woman said something; I imagine she patted him on the arm as she chastised him. A playful tease as they watched the little boy quicken his pace and cross the street toward the elementary school where he used to play Heads Up, Seven Up and cry during tornado drills. I will never forget the deliberateness in his fury. He wanted me to hear it. I write these words as a child having learned one of the great and horrible lessons of human nature. We heard it when we were young.

I kept this confrontation buried deep inside me. It stayed tucked away as a lump in my throat, as an ache in my stomach. To tell my family was to somehow make it more real, to admit evil like this existed not only in our town but in the world at large. It wasnt enough to say that somewhere out there an adult could hurl slurs at a young child to deliberately tear him down. This wasnt a scene that played out in grainy black-and-white video on school projectors or in the sanitized texts of beat-up books you threw into your backpack to be forgotten by the time you got home. No, this happened right here in my hometown. To me. It was enough to make my eyes water at the very thought of it. I couldnt bear to tell my sister or my mother. I didnt know how to bring it up to my father or brother. It was my load to bear as I went through school that week. I didnt even tell my best friends. It wasnt until Thursdays catechism class when it all came out of me in a small yet pronounced fury.

We entered St. Josephs Church the same as any other Thursday, from a nondescript side door leading down into the basement. This Thursday it all looked so drab and gray. I slunk into my brown metal chair as Mrs. Liddell closed the partition to our room. Eric clapped his hand on my back as he sat beside me. I hadnt told him about the incident by the high school, but he knew me well enough to know that something was eating at me. Ruben flanked me on the opposite side and offered us each a piece of gum. My head shake was a barely registered no as the mans words repeated in my head: Im talking to you, you little fucking spic. You goddamn wetback. My eyes adjusted as the lighting in the room changed from the closed partition.