Hey, maybe I could come work with you guys.
The Hermanos Brothers glanced at each other. It’s hard work, one of them said.
THE HERMANOS BROTHERS BY STEVEN MCBREARTY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 19
I was lifting weights in a back bedroom of my family’s home in suburban San Antonio when my mother barged in, wearing her famous Guatemalan peasant’s dress, decorated in bright, jagged bands of color. The dress was a statement that she was moving forward, catching the waves of change coursing through the contemporary, post-modern world. She moved in a certain distinctive way that she didn’t move in any other piece of clothing, swishing around with a smart, determined, cheerful demeanor, a housewife who knew that she was really no longer just an ordinary housewife, instead a new, advanced form of housewife, almost a mutation of species. I doubt there were many actual Guatemalan peasants with my oh-soAmerican mother’s sense of sunny self-sufficiency.
It was a balmy, languid late April morning in South Texas, the sun shuttling in and out of puffy cumulus clouds, a soft breeze rustling the foliage. The grass was green, the crepe myrtle trees in our backyard had blossomed forth into their full spring bounty, reds and purples and pinks, a gaudy tableau. As I lifted, I tried mightily to appreciate this beauty, I tried to savor the moment, but I was unable to. I wasn’t appreciating much then. I was a student at San Antonio College, our local two-year community college, finishing up my freshman year at home, stuck in a kind of limbo between childhood and a new, independent life. Everything exciting and “adult” seemed far away, blocked by my current status, blocked like a plugged-up sink. I was at a standstill.
Moving fluidly with the times, Mother had morphed into a kind of Renaissance Woman/Earth Mother phase, leaving my father anchored in approximately 1958. A sharp, shrewd, progressiveleaning woman at heart, she longed to appear hip and up-to-date, openminded, understanding of the travails of me, an average screwed-up 19-yearold male only child. I appreciated this quality of hers, I welcomed it at times, but sometimes it made me nervous. I wasn’t sure if it was genuine. It could be jarring. It seemed to disturb our normal, delicate, antagonistic mother/ son connection. Minus the give and take of our standard adversarial relationship, I lost my bearings. Sometimes I longed for a return to the old-fashioned, conventional mother of my early youth, unaware of trends and fashions, hair in curlers, hopelessly passé, ripe for satire and derision. Those were the days. I still had a few arrows in my quiver, however. I gave Mother my usual smart-ass response.
“How about if you just go back in your room where you belong?” I said, grunting in the middle of a curl.
She ignored my snide remark, which I understood in later years as a parent myself, was both a skill and a necessity. Then she mentioned sex, which was highly embarrassing. Mother seemed to hold the belief that I, as a registered affiliate of the so-called Love Generation, was sexually active. Unfortunately, this was not the case. This was definitely not the case. It was not even close to the case. My recent sexual activity was limited to—well, best not to mention that. Not that I wanted her to know this. Like any self-deluding young male person, I desperately wanted everyone to think that I was a dashing, desirable hot-shot.
“I understand how you young people operate nowadays,” Mother said, with a nonchalant wave. Her Guatemalan dress seemed to swish affirmingly. “It’s the way the world is now. It’s okay.”
I almost dropped the barbell on my feet.
“I’m not really sure what you’re talking about,” I said, beginning to perspire profusely, and not from the exercise. “Would you mind letting me finish my workout?”
I made a motion, mainly with my elbow, for her to basically clear the hell out. She ignored me again. It is the fate of parents forever to be plowing ahead, forging onward into the face of obstinacy and disdain and studied disregard.
“Oh—” Mother said. “I forgot. The Hermanos Brothers are coming today to cut the grass. Will you give them their check when they’re finished? I have an appointment with my gynecologist. I wrote the check out already. It’s lying on the kitchen counter.”
“Sure, Mother,” I said, with a grunt. I was relieved that she was leaving though I sure as hell didn’t want to hear about her OB-GYN. “I’ll give the Hermanos Brothers their check.”
“Don’t stay if you can’t,” Mother said. “I can put it in the mailbox for them. I’d just rather not. That one time the mailman picked it up.”
“I can give them their check, Mother,” I said. As if presenting a Zen kōan, I pronounced each word slowly, individually, in the middle of another curl, attempting also to assay a smile. It was a strained smile, to say the least. A blob of perspiration fell off my forehead onto the tip of my nose. I was finished with my workout regime, actually, but felt protected talking to her with the barbell in my grasp. It was like a security shield, a barrier blocking naked interaction between us. I really just wanted her to get the hell out.
“It’s on the counter,” Mother said.
“You said that already,” I said.
She started to leave then came back again.
“Can you take out some hamburger meat to thaw before you go?” she said. “It’s too early to put it out now.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said. “I can. I believe I am capable of that.”
She left with a tiny wave of pique, a small sign that she was fed up with my obstinate antics.
“Shit,” she said. When she said “shit” it was time for one or the other of us to take our leave. When I heard the car engine start, I set the barbell down with a bang. My forearms were shaking and stiff.
The Hermanos Brothers—I’d better explain. Their names were Angel and Enrique Rodriguez, so they were actually the Rodriguez brothers. Immigrants from Cabo San Luis, Mexico, on the Pacific coast, they lived with other family members in a wood-frame house on the Westside barrio of San Antonio. Arriving at our house for the first time, they explained to Mother that they were hermanos, meaning brothers, in Spanish. Mother misunderstood this as their last name, thus forevermore they were known to her as the Hermanos Brothers. They accepted their bogus moniker with a stoic grace, smiling impassively. God knows how they cashed their checks.
Without Mother the silence in the house seemed enormous, overpowering. I missed her somehow, missed human contact. The air conditioner clicked off, leaving the rattle and hum of the refrigerator as the only respite from total silence. I walked through the house, picking up things, reading the dustcovers of books, straightening stacks. Something about Mother’s little visit had triggered a major anxiety attack that had been brewing inside me for some time. Here at home still, a full year from transferring to the University of Texas in Austin, I was beginning to feel that my life was going nowhere. I needed to get away. I needed something different, something new. I had been dealing with Mother for too long, dealing with the same neighborhood, the same neighbors, the same stores, the same bent Yield sign at the intersection down the street. I felt restless. I felt fidgety. I considered having some of that “sexual activity” I mentioned but decided against it. I didn’t want to be fighting depression the rest of the day.
Besides, the Hermanos Brothers had pulled up in front of the house now, in a colorless old Chevy pick-up truck hitched to a fenced-in flat-bed trailer.
I could see them through the front window, two strong-backed young men with flowing black hair and black wispy mustaches. Observing them, I found the world interconnected, more connected by far than with my Anglo friends and my Anglicized Hispanic-American friends, connected by international commerce and our common humanity. And they seemed contented, happy and joyful in a way that I could never be, though obviously they had little money. Like others in my demographic, I was saddled with the anxiety of ambition, of having to compete with others for scare resources, for grades, for adulation. It was all about competition, but I didn’t like to compete. Almost without thinking, I wandered outside to shoot the shit with the Hermanos Brothers for awhile. Maybe that would boost me out of my onslaught of malaise. It would at least be good for some short-term entertainment.
“Hola!” I said, making a big deal of my Spanish accent. Growing up in San Antonio, I heard a great deal of Spanish spoken, but understood very little. Attending Catholic school, I was required to take Latin. All you could say in Latin was “Agricola es Roma”.
“Buenos dias, senor,” one of the Hermanos Brothers said.
“Buenos dias,” I said cheerfully.
“Como estas?” one of the Hermanos Brother said.
“Muy bien,” I said, and smiled. That was about it for my Spanish. I was stumped for anything else to say. I stood with my hands on the hips of my cut-off blue jeans, at the top of our long, sloping lawn with a view of the city, a smiling, stupid, barefoot, long-haired, pampered white kid from the suburbs who wanted to prove that he was simpatico with a couple of working dudes from Mexico. This made me feel good temporarily, as if I were doing something for humanity. Not all of us are assholes, I felt like saying.
The Hermanos Brothers smiled, too, as they unhooked their trailer gate and began the process of unloading their lawn-mowing gear. I moved closer to them, by my posture offering my willingness to help. We slapped hands raucously. Without further ado, I lifted an entire lawn mower out of the truck and bounced it onto the lawn. Ignoring the Hermanos Brothers’ odd, intimate exchange of eye contact, I voiced a bright idea.
“Hey,” I said. “Maybe I could come work with you guys.”