The driving lesson.
When I was about 15, my family moved back to Puerto Rico. I stayed with my sister Lydia so I could finish high school, and of course, proceeded to act out horribly and do all sorts of terrible things to her and my brother-in-law. I finally ended up leaving Jersey City early, using the excuse that Mami had gotten cancer, and that I was supposedly upset and that was a reason I was acting out. I quit high school not even a month before I was supposed to graduate.
We were living in Bayamon which is a relatively big city of mostly modest suburban cookie cutter homes. I started back with the horrible relationship I had with my stepfather, which had never been good. He and I were always at war. I was I'm sure, a giant pain in the ass and here we were in this concrete bunker of a house that was not much better than a prison cell and with not much to do. Armando was a brusque and kind of ignorant man who never missed, it seemed to me, an opportunity to show me his disdain.
He had favorites, even amongst his own kids. Over the years we learned to manage that tendency, manipulating him to get some favorable dispensation (like getting to watch a certain TV program) by getting the favored child to ask for it. My brothers, the two next older children, were protective of me and we would conspire to get things through them, the three of us, mainly the boys. Janet was always a mama's girl and was always the one that snitched us out but we boys pretty much hung together.
I was just coming into driving age but had no driving experience. My brother Papo, two years younger, was allowed to practice his driving. That was surprising as my stepfather was a fanatic about his cars; they were his babies, his earthly capital. This man, born in 1898, had been an orphan peasant child, a street beggar who had migrated to the states as a migrant worker and made his way as a solid postal employee. He had literally pulled himself up by the bootstraps. His prized possession always were his vehicles. He kept them immaculate. He was a kid about them. Now retired and back in the homeland, his everyday consisted of sitting on the little concrete slab of a porch and carport, shining his car and drinking beer.
This day was of little difference. He and his cousin were drinking beer, shooting the shit, passing time. Papo jumped at the invitation to take the car for a spin and I accompanied him. Away from the house, he asked me if I wanted to drive. We switched seats. I stalled the car. Nose up. On a hill. I had no idea what to do. I panicked. My little brother tried to calm me down. "Just put it in reverse. Clutch in. Make sure the ignition is on. Pop the clutch when I tell you." The car started a slow roll but soon we were flying down this hill with me trying to keep it in the road and my brother keeping watch for traffic behind us.
"STOP!!!!" he yelled.
I slammed on the breaks but it was too late. Impact. And there it was, the perfect Ferris Bueller moment; My stepdad, in what is symbolically the totem of his world achievements and now a metaphor for the state of our relationship. I had t-boned his car and he was pinned. He is cursing, fuming, his cousin laughing hysterically. We had been gone long enough for them to come looking for us and I had managed to hit the one person in the world in Puerto Rico who hated my guts and survived only because he was pinned inside. I moved in with my father soon after.
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