The Beginning (The Life 1)

My only answer was a sigh as I entered the house and jogged upstairs to my wing with him hot on my heels. I sat patiently while he tried to camouflage the fact that my knuckles were bruised and torn in places.

“I see those stupid classes are still good for something.” He ignored my dig and kept going. The only place where we differ is his chosen profession or the thing he wants to do with his life after college. A fucking cop.

He knows more about my family’s true dealings than most since he’d spent some time in New York with us over the years. No matter how careful you are, there’re just some things you can’t hide. Especially not from someone as smart as him. My only hope is that we never stand across the table from each other.

GABRIEL

With the weekend behind us, it was back to the grind; school, homework, grades, all the happy shit my parents pay attention to as if neither of them realized that the grown-ass man living under their roof had changed. I myself am not really sure why in the last year, things had become so drastic for me. It felt almost as if the clock was running out. Since the day I turned eighteen, it’s like that thing that had been simmering inside since the day I first learned the truth went on boil.

Maybe it’s because, at eighteen, I’m now officially a man. Not when I jumped up to six-two out of nowhere the summer I turned sixteen, or when I found the first hair on my chin before that. Then I was still somewhere between innocent and wannabe tough guy. But as soon as the clock struck twelve-oh-one on the day of my birth, I knew I’d changed course.

I don’t resent ma for telling me, far from it. But I do accept that the knowledge changed the trajectory of my life. My dad has been doing everything in his power to take our family business to the next level. I know from earlier talks that he doesn’t want me to get my hands dirty the way grandpa did and great-grandpa before him. But unbeknownst to him, I need that cover for what I must one day do.

I watched ma as she moved around the kitchen, fussing at the girls who were busy playing on their phones and being their usual annoying selves. Pop had his usual indulgent smile on his face as he played referee, every once in a while giving me that secret grin we always share when the females get into one of their scuffles. This morning it was makeup.

Anna and Rosa want to wear it; ma still thinks they’re too young. She still has that old-world style about her that’s so far removed from the here, and now it’s not to be believed. Listening to her tell stories of her youth is like watching a rerun of an old black and white film. She refuses to let any of us go there, though every time it came up, she’d give me a look—something between dread and hope.

I think she’d come to regret telling me her life story once she saw the changes in me over the years. Not that I’ve given away anything with my actions, I haven’t, and maybe that’s why she’s grown afraid somewhat. We never talk about it, not since that first week when she sprung it on me.

It’s as though she knew that I’d take up the mantle without being asked. And really, what was I going to say? There’s no way I was going to ask for details. I knew the most pertinent facts, who, and where. Thankfully as behind the times as her birthplace was, they’d been dragged into the twenty-first century by technology, and it wasn’t hard for me to find the enemy when I went searching. All I need now is time.

I listened to my family’s banter and pretended to be part of the moment, but inside I was a cauldron about to boil over. It’s been this way for the past two years; in fact, ever since ma came clean and told me everything that had happened to her, I’ve thought of nothing else.

At first, I felt such guilt that I was somehow to blame. It took me a long time to come to grips with that, especially since I couldn’t talk it over with my go-to guy. Mom never came right out and said it, but I got the feeling she didn’t want Pop to know that she was sharing her past with me, so I never brought it up to him.

That was something else I’d questioned as well. I knew I was adopted, that Pop wasn’t my bio dad, since a very young age, but I never felt like anything but his until I learned about ma’s assault. I didn’t think he loved me less, but in my young mind, I imagined that there had to be some kind of resentment there.