Being True (25 page)

“You too, Gustavo,” my mother said. “You have all been so kind to my Tru. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.” When she spoke her last few words, her gaze fell upon Javi. Her smile extended to the light in her eyes. It was her way of telling Javi she knew, and she’d be here for us both.

Javi got the message. He reached under the table and squeezed my hand. His touch basically asked, “She knows?” When I patted his hand in response, he understood my answer was yes. The tension in his grip relaxed, and he laced his index finger with mine. It was all good.

“Please call me Gus,” Mr. Castillo said. “Most everyone does.”

“Thank you, Gus,” my mom said as Mrs. Castillo placed a plate before her. “Maricela, this smells wonderful, and it looks delicious.”

Mr. Castillo patted his belly. “It’s better than delicious,” he said. “That’s why I’m
gordo
.”

All of us laughed at Mr. Castillo’s comment. Calling himself fat because of his wife’s cooking was his way of warning us we were going to stuff ourselves. Only Javi didn’t laugh. Flames of embarrassment licked across his red cheeks. His father was perhaps the only person alive who could mortify him so easily.

“Dad!”

“What?” Mr. Castillo asked. “It’s true. Look.” Over his button-down shirt, he grabbed more than an inch of skin from his side and presented it to the table. “See?”

“
Dad!
” Javi said again.

“
Ay!
” Mrs. Castillo scolded her son as she put plates in front of Javi and me. “Leave your father alone. It’s good that he eats. It means I’m doing my job.” She grabbed plates for herself and her husband. “Besides, it gives me something to hold on to,” she added with a wink as she sat next to my mom.

Once again, everyone laughed. Javi practically slid under the table.

“The two of you are killing me here.” Javi’s face turned redder than the enchilada sauce.

“It’s what parents do,” my mom said. “Embarrassing our children is one of the perks of the job.” She then threw her arms around me and planted a big, wet kiss on my cheek. This time everyone laughed but me. I was too busy trying to not crawl under the table with Javi. “Isn’t that right, Gus and Maricela?”

Mr. and Mrs. Castillo nodded with glee.

“Now, let’s eat,” Mr. Castillo said. “But first, we say grace.”

We held hands. While Mr. Castillo blessed the food, I offered up a silent prayer that love and understanding might continue to rule our parents’ hearts.

O
VER
THE
course of dinner, our parents bonded. Mr. Castillo and my mother traded war stories about working outside the home. Mr. Castillo worked at Brooks Army Base as a manager in one of the departments at the hospital and told my mother if her job with Dr. Torres didn’t pan out to give him a call. He was friends with the head of Human Resources and would help her out if she needed.

“That’s very kind of you, Gus,” she said. “I will definitely remember that.”

My mother and Mrs. Castillo talked cooking. She admitted to being awful and pitied me for having to eat whatever she happened to string together. Mrs. Castillo offered to give her a few cooking tips and share some easy recipes to help improve her skills.

“Now I know one of the reasons Tru comes over here so much,” my mom said. “The two of you are wonderful!”

Mr. Castillo nodded. “It’s true. We are.”

Everyone laughed while Javi groaned.

After a few more minutes of small talk about the prospects of my mother’s new job, Mr. Castillo turned to Javi and me and asked, “I have one more question, and it’s for the two of you.”

“What’s that, Dad?”

“Not that I haven’t enjoyed my wife’s wonderful meal or finally meeting Grace, but when are the two of you finally going to tell us why you’ve brought us all together?”

Javi’s jaw hit the table, and he once again found my hand. I gripped onto it just as tightly as he grasped mine. Our scheming hadn’t gone unnoticed and now that we were being called on it, neither of us knew how to respond.

Mrs. Castillo nodded as she joined her husband in studying us. She glanced down as if she could see underneath the table before nodding. Did she know we were holding hands? “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” she said before turning to my mother. “How about you, Grace?”

My mother sighed before looking into Mrs. Castillo’s eyes. My mother was just like me. She lacked the ability to lie. “I have some idea,” she said. “But I think it’s important we hear it from the boys.”

Mr. Castillo agreed as he sat back in his chair. No anger brewed in his eyes, and no worry crouched at the corners of his big smile. “So tell us. What’s going on? Is there some big party you two want to go to? Perhaps out of town, and you think that if you ask us together we’d be more likely to let you go?” He chuckled as if the idea amused him. “I did the same thing when I was your age. My best friend, Jose, and I had been asked to go to this party at a friend’s house in Austin. We were seniors too, and boy, did we want to go. But we knew our parents were likely to turn us down. We had a plan, though. We’d be on our best behavior for weeks, get our parents together, and tell them how we had it all worked out so they wouldn’t worry. Is that what’s going on here?”

Javi tried to speak but no words came out.

Mr. Castillo glanced from his son to me. Since Javi seemed incapable of answering, he sought a response from the next likely candidate. “It’s not quite the same thing, Mr. Castillo, but we do have a plan about something we want to discuss with you.”

This got my mother’s attention. “A plan? For what?”

Now it was my turn to lose the ability to speak. When Javi squeezed my hand in comfort, the strength we lacked separately coursed between us. Alone we couldn’t handle such an adult situation, but together it seemed we’d weather most anything.

“Let me go first,” Javi said. His eyebrows arched, asking me if that was okay. After I nodded, he surveyed the table before speaking. “I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out how I was going to bring this up, and the words just never seemed right. But as we ate and laughed, and you all embarrassed the heck out of Tru and me—” His father chuckled while the moms waited in silence. “Well, I realized no matter how scared I might be, I was surrounded by love. As I’ve always been. Mom and Dad, you’ve been the best parents I could have ever asked for. You’ve always been there for me. No matter what. And I can’t thank you enough for that. But—” Javi stuttered, trying to find the words. When I squeezed his hand, he received the required jolt of confidence he needed. “I just hope you’ll still be all those things after I say what I have to say.”

Mr. Castillo’s smile slowly retreated. He switched his gaze to his wife and my mom, who looked back at him. They both waited on his reaction. “Son, I’ll always be there for you. I love you and your mother more than anything else in this world. More than my life. So don’t ever doubt that, but the way you’re talking is scaring me. What’s happening? Are you okay?” He stared at his wife. “Is he sick, Maricela?”

She shook her head. “No,
amor
. He’s not.”

He locked onto Javi’s eyes. “Then for the love of God, just tell me what’s going on. It can’t be worse than what’s going through my head right now.”

Javi gave my hand one final squeeze. This was it. We had arrived at the point of no return. He stared at me, and I smiled before he turned to his father and said, “I’m gay, and Tru is my boyfriend.”

Silence stole all sound from the room. No one moved or even seemed to take a breath. Mr. Castillo sat completely still, unable to stop glancing back and forth from Javi and me.

Mrs. Castillo turned her gaze upward, her lips moving in silent prayer, and my mother scooted her chair closer to mine. She wrapped a reassuring arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into her comforting touch.

“I don’t understand,” Mr. Castillo finally said as he shook his head. Was he trying to shake off the words as if they hadn’t been spoken? “You’re what?”

“I’m gay,” Javi repeated. “As in—”

“I know what the word means,” Mr. Castillo said. The bite in his tone was unmistakable. In the months I’d had dinner with Javi’s family, I’d never seen Mr. Castillo upset. He’d seemed incapable of being anything other than happy or positive. I’d clearly been wrong. “Did you know about this, Maricela?”

Mrs. Castillo, who still conversed with God in the heavens above, closed her eyes. When she opened them, she turned to her husband and said, “I didn’t know,” she said. “But I suspected.”

“What?” Javi asked. “Really?”

Mrs. Castillo nodded. “I saw the two of you in the backyard one day a few months ago. You were talking and tossing the ball like you’d done pretty much every day. And I sometimes stood there and watched the two of you because I hadn’t seen Javi so happy in so long. I thanked God for bringing Tru into your life, mijo, because when he arrived, that spark that had always been yours came back. As your momma, I could see the sadness you sometimes struggled with. I didn’t know what it was. I thought it might be school or thinking about college. Or even the pressure of all the practices and the new baseball season, but there’d always been some part of you that you never shared with anyone. You had friends, but they never really understood you. Your morals. Your strength of character. Or your desire to be who you truly were. So you hid, and in hiding you got lost. But when you and Tru were together, you were a different boy. And it was a sight I cherished. So that was why I would sometimes watch.” She took a deep breath, glanced over at her husband, and continued, “And on that day, the two of you wrestled. And when I saw the way you looked at each other. And the way you touched each other, I suddenly realized what you might be hiding. Why you seemed so alone when you had so many friends. After that, I didn’t know what to do. So I prayed every night, and finally God answered me. He reminded me I was your mother, and it was my duty to love you. Against that love, nothing else mattered.”

Javi wiped the wetness from his eyes before he stood to hug his mother. My mom and I both sniffled, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to turn us both into blubbering messes. That was another trait I’d inherited from her.

“Thank you, Mom,” Javi said into his mother’s neck as he wept. “I love you so much.”

“Let me get this straight,” Mr. Castillo said. He pulled back from the table and stood next to his wife. “You suspected our son might be gay, and you didn’t say anything to me?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Suspecting and knowing are two different things, Gustavo. You know that. Besides, it wasn’t for me to say. After all, you’ve always said a man has to speak for himself. I figured if it was true, Javi would tell us when and if he was ready.”

Mr. Castillo studied his son as if he were a stranger before turning around and walking to the kitchen sink. “I don’t know what to do with this,” he whispered. “How can my son be gay? What did I do wrong?”

That was my mother’s cue. She stood and walked over to Mr. Castillo. “Gus, you didn’t do anything wrong. From where I stand, I see a loving, kind-hearted young man any parent should be proud of. It took great strength to tell us what he’s told us. And it’s taken great courage to overcome the inner demons that kept him from being honest. But most of all, it shows how much he loves and trusts you because he’s willing to share what he’s kept hidden.
That
is the son you’ve raised.
That
is the man he’s become. You should be proud.”

Mr. Castillo turned around, tears streaming from his eyes. “I am proud of him,” he said with a sniffle. “But the Bible. It says homosexuality is a sin. We are Catholic, Grace. How do I reconcile what my son is with what my faith has always told me to believe?” His eyes pleaded with my mom for a response, as if her words had the potential to save his son’s soul.

“The only advice I can give you is to have faith,” she said as she held his hands in hers. “And as you know, having faith isn’t easy. But that’s what keeps us strong.”

“Dad,” Javi said as he left his mother’s safety for the uncertainty that still warred across Mr. Castillo’s features. “I want you to know I haven’t changed. I’m still the same boy you played catch with in the backyard. The one you taught how to shave and what it meant to be a man. To own up to my actions. To walk with my head high and my heart open. It was you who taught me being a man means I have to stand on my own but to never be afraid to lean on others when I needed it.” My mother stepped away from Mr. Castillo, and Javi filled the space. He placed his hands on his father’s shoulders and squeezed them like I’d seen him do countless times in the past. It was how they reassured each other. It was how they said “I love you.” “I’m a man of faith too. The same one you and Mom and the Bible taught me. God lives in my soul too, Dad, and I believe He loves me whether I’m gay or straight. Because He’s a parent too. Just like Mrs. Cobbler, and just like you and Mom.”

“I’m scared,” Mr. Castillo uttered, and the words choked in his throat. It wasn’t easy for anyone to admit, much less a father to his son. “I don’t know what to do. As your father, I’m supposed to have the answers. I’m supposed to be your guide. But with this, I can’t help you. And not being there for you terrifies me the most.”

“But you will be there for me,” Javi said. The tears lodged in his throat caused his words to quaver. “You’ve always been there for me.”

“And we’ll all be there for each other,” my mother added. She stood behind Javi and patted his back soothingly. “Like you said, Gus. Sometimes a man has to lean on others, and we can be each other’s support. Isn’t that right, Maricela?”

Mrs. Castillo reached across the table and took my hand. She smiled and gazed upon me with the love she’d always freely given. “That’s right,” she said. “Because that is what the Bible teaches us most of all.”

Mr. Castillo held out his arms and drew Javi into perhaps the strongest hug I’d ever seen. “I love you, mijo,” he said. “And I’m sorry for the way I acted. I was surprised, and I was confused. But I never for one moment stopped loving you. I hope you know that.”