“Did you hide the Jimador that was in the cabinet yet?” I asked my mother as she was folding clothes.

            “I didn’t think I would have to again,” she replied.

            “It’s getting late. I’m sure he stopped there after work again. I just hope this doesn’t end the same way as last time. I’m tired of having to stay up for his ass on school nights making sure he doesn’t hurt you. Or himself.”

            My mother was the naivest woman I thought I knew. Spending the day making a stack of tortillas de harina and some carne con chile to go with it, just for her husband, Javier, to be absent for. She fixed a plate for him anyways. She says she has to because that’s what her mother told her she should do as the woman of the house. And that’s it. She tells my sister that someday she will be doing the same for her husband while he’s at work.

            “Jefa, why are you still up for that bastard?” I asked.

            “Excuse me? That is your father,” she said.

            “He doesn’t act like it.”

            “Go and put the Jimador upstairs into your room. What has gotten into you?”

            I walked to my room with the bottle I wish we didn’t have in the house. I wish we lived in a normal house. One where there’s a dad who comes home at a right time, taking his tie off while giving his wife a kiss at the entryway. Not someone who comes home smelling like cheap perfume and the distilled spirit of mezcal. One where a mother doesn’t have to convince herself of a faithful husband while she scrapes the spoiled remains off the plate of what was supposed to be his dinner. A house where the people in it speak one language and not two broken languages as if they were one complete one.

            “Ya,” I told my mother.

            “You know you have strong emotions just like your father,” she said.

            “Oh God,” I mumbled.

            A creaking sound from the door hinge welcomed Javier’s clumsy feet into the house. Pain was written all over the face of my mother as she watched my dad bump into the walls as if he was performing a ritual dance. Our hearts ached. She pretended that seeing him like this didn’t bother her that much, but her eyes told me what her words couldn’t.

            “I’m home now.” Javier’s raspy voice echoed in the house.

            “Where were you, Javier? I had dinner ready for you earlier, but I had to throw it out. It’s a little late you know, and we were staying up for you to get home,” my mom told him. “Have you been drinking again?” She asked in an unnatural voice.

            “I just had a few drinks with some coworkers after our shift.”

            “Oh okay. As long as it was just a few. Do you need help getting to bed?” she asked.

            “No,” said Javier.

            “How was work?”

            “It’s my time to be home now. Why the fuck would I want to be thinking about work?”

            I pretended not to hear him cuss at my mother. The thought of speaking up to my dad scared me, and I hated myself for being scared of a coward. If only I was a little bit bigger. A little bit stronger. Maybe then I could stand up and express my true self. But instead, I was selfish and stood quiet because I didn’t want to have to think of another lie to tell my friends explaining why I would be coming to school with another black eye.

            He searched for the bottle and grew in frustration for not being able to find it. Luckily this time he was too tired to stay angry, so he went to the couch and fell asleep.

            “Mijo, go help your father to the room,” she said.

            I helped Javier up the stairs. It was like carrying a corpse. A body full of nothing but its natural anatomy. No person underneath the skin, just emptiness. How could something so empty also be so heavy?

As I laid my father down, I wondered why he drinks. I wondered why my mother lets herself suffer as much as she does for him. I also wondered why I let myself suffer for this man. I gave him a sign of the cross like my mother does to all of us before sleeping, but I know he doesn’t believe in it. Just like myself. Perhaps I am a lot like my father, and it just scares me to think that.

            “I’m going to sleep now, jefa. I have to wake up for school in a few hours,” I say to her as I approach for my own blessing for the night.

            The image of my mother’s pained face stuck with me as I got ready to go to sleep. Before going to bed, I opened up my drawer where I had hidden the bottle of Jimador from my father. I opened it to be greeted by the smell of its sinful sugars, and I drank it straight out the bottle. With my mother’s comment of my father’s similarities, I tried to see a world that my father sees with this first sip.