Learn to Love You by Jade Hernández
Mayda while she got ready, leaning my shoulder against the side of my black Chevy, when my papá approached.
He was dressed in his jeans and work boots, a sombrero on his head to shield him from the sun. Not like it ever made much of a difference with this heat. It beat down against us with unrelenting pressure and left us sweating and red-faced, darkening our skin. Hats just seemed like a part of the uniform at this point, with no real purpose.
“No te tardes,” Papá said, his voice stern. It was a complete contradiction to his open and loving expression at breakfast earlier. He was all hard lines and seriousness now as he ordered me to hurry back. The face he wore in my presence was always so different from the mask he donned in front of others.
“I won’t be long,” I promised.
He nodded once. “Good. You have things to do here on the rancho. When you get back, I need you to talk with Gabriela so she can show you how payment works and you can discuss inventory.”
I tried not to tense, but the slightest tightening of my body was inevitable. I knew he noticed it, because his eyes narrowed on me, breathing me in like he would the smoke from those old Cuban cigars he liked to keep in his office.
My sisters often joked that as the first-born son, I was the favorite. That being born a man somehow earned me special treatment. Perhaps to others it would appear that way, but the reality was that if you were born first in a Mexican household, you were beholden and indebted to your parents. They raised you differently from your youngest siblings, funneled more responsibilities onto your shoulders, demanded more of you because you were the example the other children would follow.
I wasn’t oblivious to the distinction between Gabriela and I, though. My prerogatives weren’t limited to kitchen duty or diaper-changing like hers had been, but that didn’t make my struggles as their ‘protector’ any less valid. Especially when that role was thrust upon me by my papá, and to refuse the path laid out for me meant his censure and my consternation.
Relaxing my features, I ran a hand through my closely cropped hair. My stomach twisted with frustration and a sense of foreboding.
I loved my papá, I truly did. Familia was important, they were everything. Like any Latine, we sometimes defined ourselves by the roots we put down. By how close we were and how much we valued and were loyal to those in our lives. We were as close as could be, and while I loved the rancho, and while I was proud of what we had all built, a struggle lived inside me.
The struggle of wanting more, of wanting something different, while at the same time balancing on that edge that would keep me tightly knit to them, to my papá and his legacy. As his only son, it rested on my shoulders to keep the rancho going after him.
It shouldn’t have been hard. My papá had been grooming me for this since I could walk. I knew what to do, I knew how to work the fields just like any other trabajador here. Contrary to the wealth of the house, I didn’t grow up sucking on a silver spoon. We didn’t struggle by any means. Not like others struggled, like Doña Gloria after her husband died. But he taught me humility by sending me out to work with the others. Like he did and still does.
Because what kind of a jefe would I be if I wasn’t willing to get my hands dirty?
The philosophy made sense, in retrospect. So I busted ass at the crack of dawn with the rest of them and I learned never to complain. Never to contradict.
Now, though, my father was training me in other ways. I knew the rancho and I knew the workers. It was time to learn about the business side of things.
That was usually Gabriela’s domain. She was an accountant and took care of all matters pertaining to the rancho. She helped to bring in the money. Numbers were her thing. She paid the wages, the taxes, did inventory, and everything else. My papá had a hand in it, and now he wanted to drag me into it as well.
It was one thing to work the fields and tend to the animals. It felt like another commitment entirely to start taking over that aspect of the business. It was a huge step. One that had me jerking back and staggering, only to feel my papá’s massive hand against my shoulder, teetering me forward into something I wasn’t ready for.
Something I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for.
“Great,” I answered, hoping he wouldn’t hear the skepticism in my voice.
He wasn’t Mamá. She could smell bullshit from a mile away. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care about my tentative misgivings. He had a way of ignoring my discomfort like it was an Olympic sport. Out of sight, out of mind.
“Perfecto.” He clapped me on the back. “Then we are going to meet with our suppliers, and I’ll teach you how to buy and breed the best stallions on this side of the border.”
“Sounds great, papá.”
His lips curled from beneath his thick, graying mustache in a smile, his dark brows raising over brown eyes. He looked like he wanted to speak again, to say something else, but I was spared as Mayda walked towards the truck.
A bag was slung over a slender shoulder, her hair freshly combed and showered. Clad in tight jeans and a soft pink and gray cardigan, she walked in an almost tentative way towards me, her eyes guarded. For a moment, my papá fell away and I was lost in the hazel color of her eyes.
My entire family had eyes that ranged from the color of molten honey to brown to black. Hers were different, yet it wasn’t the color that fascinated me. It was the secrets she garnered in their depths.
When we were younger, I used to yank on the back of her ponytail to get her attention. She would never flinch, never scream at me for it. She’d been calm and collected even then, tossing a strait-laced expression over her shoulder like she couldn’t be bothered with my antics.
She wore a mask, even in her eyes, and I was desperate to pull it off and catch a glimpse of what lay underneath. I’d always been curious. Granted, I knew—we all knew—from Gabriela that Mayda’s home life left much to be desired, but we didn’t know details. Mayda was closed off. And we didn’t pry.
She was like a perfect porcelain statue that I was almost too afraid to touch sometimes, out of fear that she would break. A thought that came and went fleetingly. She wasn’t weak or easily breakable.
The truth was, I didn’t know what she was beyond the icy, crisp demeanor.
Her footsteps slowed as she approached us, her worn flats scuffling against the rocky ground. She paused, and a slow smile curled at the edges of her mouth.
I lived for those smiles, for the softness of her face when she started to let her guard down. She pointed that smile in my direction first before turning to my papá.
“Thanks so much, Señor Águila. I promise I won’t keep him long.” Her tone should have been teasing, but she said it so softly, seriously, leaving no doubt in my mind that she meant to not monopolize my time.
I didn’t know why that stung.
It always felt like she was trying so quickly to get rid of me.
“I told you many times to call me Papá Damián.”
Mayda’s eyes flashed. It was shockingly brief before the mask pulled tightly at the edges again. She didn’t say anything to reply to that, though she did give the slightest nod with her head.
That was answer enough for papá. He turned to me, the jovial expression he wore when facing Mayda morphing into something stern as it tore through me like a knife. It made me tense and give him a terse nod before turning away from him to face Mayda.
“Ready to go?” I snapped without meaning to. Her guarded expression turned surprised, then hard as she nodded. I didn’t give myself a moment to feel guilty for snapping because I was already turning, briskly opening the passenger side door.
Mayda slid inside carefully like she did everything else. Once she was settled inside, I slammed the door and rounded the other side, hopping in. Only after we were both buckled in did I peel out of the rancho, leaving my father and his expectations behind in a cloud of dust.