The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts (7 page)

She spoke excitedly about passages from the Bible.
“Lo que Dios dice, se cumple.”
What God says, he does.

The two dozen women in the room joined in on the
se cumple
.

• • •

On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, I'd sat in a synagogue listening to a reform rabbi deliver his sermon about a familiar passage
in the Torah: the story of Abraham and Isaac. God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and Abraham endeavors to comply with God's command. But just before the moment of sacrifice, God sends an angel to Abraham to grant Isaac a reprieve. Instead, Abraham sacrifices a ram, and father and son return safely home together.

Many of the stories in the Torah drift away, but that of Abraham and Isaac sticks. A father is told to kill his own child and says yes. God commands, “Thou shalt not kill,” but he directs his disciple to do exactly that.

If one believes in God's might, and the direct intervention of God in one's life, wouldn't it follow that Abraham would comply with this directive? Abraham is proving his absolute allegiance to a single God, a concept that was radical at the time. When that God, all-powerful, issued a command, it stands to reason that Abraham would obey. If he did not, the consequences could be incomprehensibly worse than the loss of one life, even if that loss was his own child. On the other hand, it's possible that killing one's own child sits at the limit of the horror we are capable of comprehending as human beings. Perhaps a reasonable person trying to evade this fate would be willing to gamble on any other consequence.

As I listened to the sermon, it took me a moment before John, Angela, and the children flickered into mind, like a lightbox faltering as it switches on. According to John, something told him that killing the children was imperative, that he was engaged in a battle of good and evil, and he was on the side of good. He said that he had long seen himself as exceptional, chosen by God for some purpose, and had dreams where he battled demons. Where those thoughts and the message to kill his children came from is debatable, but
John said he believed at the time that it was divinely sent. Regardless of whether the culpable influence was psychosis or a spiritual force, there was no contradicting intervention at the final moment. No angel of God was present to stop John's actions. If any of us today were to kill his or her own child and attribute the imperative to do so to God, we would be labeled monsters of the most repulsive nature. The excuse of being commanded by God rings hollow, deceptive, or insane in a modern context.

I was stuck in my own thoughts on John and Angela when the rabbi's voice, rumbling with conviction, broke through.

“You say, ‘I would not do that.' And you would be saying that you would not do what the source of all, the Creator of the world, God Almighty, told you to do,” Rabbi Robert Levy said.

It can be difficult to conceptualize God's direct intervention in our lives, where “what God says, as we've learned, is what happens,” as the woman at Good Neighbor told the group. We follow our own instincts, believing them to be our own. And we abide by the rules of society. These laws may be based on the codes of the Old Testament, forbidding us from killing or stealing, but if we break them, we will be punished concretely by a group of people who represent the modern rule of law.

Levy explained that, in the story of Abraham and Isaac, components of the Torah that usually work in union—righteousness and compassion—are separated from one another, acting independently. Abraham is the righteous one, behaving like a good disciple by doing as he is told. God eschews righteousness by issuing a despicable directive, one that seems seeded in the most jealous and manipulative impulse (prove to me how much you love me by sacri
ficing what is most precious to you), but then sweeps in at the final moment, offering compassion. Levy told the congregation that it is up to us to look for the points where righteousness and compassion intersect, and that we must find balance in our lives between what is merely right and what is compassionate; we must be neither the bighearted rube acting on pure emotion, nor the coldhearted realist who uses the rule book as his only guide.

When we dole out punishment to criminals, we usually begin with righteousness, as we apply the rule of law, and then, later, we might consider compassion. In capital cases, this plays out when defense attorneys present mitigating factors, reasons that the person on trial might be deserving of compassion and therefore be spared the harshest punishment—death—and instead serve life in prison. The guilt or innocence of the person is not addressed at this stage, but rather how much of our compassion he or she deserves.

The binding of Isaac has been interpreted for centuries as a story with a lesson that we're meant to learn, while the crime on East Tyler Street seems worthless as any sort of guide. Rather, it's what crops up in the wake of the crime that summons tricky questions. How do we, as bystanders, react to an atrocity? Here, Levy's sermon is germane. How do we become the best versions of ourselves when confronted with another person who exhibits the worst behavior within humanity? Letting righteousness or compassion guide us would be simple. We could let either impulse take us by the hand, leading us willingly toward uncomplicated forgiveness or vicious revenge. Putting the pair together simultaneously, while also weighing the rest of the ingredients of the event, is a vast and consuming task.

• • •

I walked to the building, a few blocks down East Tyler Street. It stood, menacing and comforting as ever, indifferent to my attentions. Here was Mount Moriah, the site of the slaughter. I walked a few doors down, toward the house where I'd met Miguel Angel. No car pulled up this time. No glamorous girl was walking toward the house, bringing her Austin dazzle to the neighborhood. A speckled Chihuahua walked out of the narrow crack in the gate of Miguel Angel's grandmother's house, but the lanky young man was nowhere to be found. The German shepherds in the neighbor's yard rose and gnashed their teeth. I crossed the street.

I'd written to John asking about his children's names. During the trial, testimony indicated that his youngest was named after a volunteer at Good Neighbor—Mary Jane—but I wanted to verify the origin. Julissa, he said, was a derivation of her biological father's name, Julian.

Johnny was named after me, I changed his middle name though to Stephon after the carector alter ego of Steve Ercal named Stephon Arket, the cool guy. Because my son would be cool like his daddy!

You might recognize that character from the 1990s sitcom
Family Matters
.

Mary Jane was named
after a name I liked the sound of when I was about 15 or 16 when I first started smoking marijuana. Mean
ing Mary Jane. I know it was inappropriate to name her after a drug but the name had grown on me through the years and I like how it sounded. Mary Jane Rubio. I liked it.

In another letter, I asked John about his children's personalities. Mostly, he wrote about Julissa. It made sense—she was the oldest.

Julie was my baby girl, I would shower her with kisses and hugs which she loved and drove her crazy with joy. She was alot like me, very energetic almost bouncing off the walls like me when I was a child. She was very sweet, loving, caring and innoccent. If I was sad she would hug me and pat my shoulder and tell me there there but in Spanish whish was all she spock. She was so silly and made me laugh alot seeing her. Rarely she would fight with Johnny my baby boy over things. She would share everything with him and even her baby sister Mary Jane. She was not always like this though. When I first met Angela and Julie they had it bad. Angela was with this guy that beat her and cheated on her but there she stayed becaue he would always tell her taht noone else would ever want her. It took me alot of work to get that kind of thinking out of her head but she started reallizing she was of great value and not worthless like both of us had been told all our lives.

John saw himself as Angela's and Julissa's savior.

All the fighting and screaming would scare Julie and I honestly believe she was tramotized because even though she was 1 she
did not speak a word nor was she potty trained yet. Girls develop faster than boys so she should have been talking by then but she was not.

Within 6 months of being with me she was talking non stop and even learned to use the potty. Angela would tell me she was too little for that but I told her she was not and I was right. One afternoon Angela and I were enjoying talking like we always did like good friends and out of nowhere Julie comes saying “look daddy, I did poo-poo.” With the potty I had bouth her in her little hands. She really did go by herself and I was soooo proud of her, hugged her and told her she made me very happy. From then out she would just run to me and tell me “Daddy, daddy me pee-pee or poo-poo.” I would take her bottoms off and she would go running like that to the restroom while I laugh from how cute she looked. Johnny was more of a tough guy, trying to boss everyone around even though he could not talk at 1 yet except some small stuff but I taught him to walk. He would pull on Angela, Julie or me if we tryed to get off the bed because he wanted us to be with him. He would get ontop of us to try to pin us down or rap his little legs around us. I would play with him a lot by pushing him down on the bed or lift him up and throw him gently on the bed, he loved that and would laugh like a maniac, jumping to try and get into my arms so I can throw him again. He liked to play ruff and sometimes Julie would complain to me Johnny was being mean. Then there is my Marie jane, sooo small, with the most angelic smile I had ever seen. She never cryed that I can remember because she was hun
gry, soiled herself or because she was sad. She was only 2 months but most kids that age cry alot. Johnny cryed but not alot alot. Mary Jane was somewhat darker skinned like my dad and looked to me a lot like my dad's mom whom didn't like me I may add.

In other words, things may have been hard, but in John's estimation his family had what mattered most, what he lacked growing up: two loving, attentive parents. In his telling, such love superseded stability, money, sobriety, or physical comfort.

I have always wanted to be a father since back when I was a little kid. I promised myself I would be a great dad, nothing like my dad and for the short time I did have with my kids I was, until this happened that is. I wanted someone to be a part of me, to give my love to and get love from. Many believe that Julie and Johnny were not my kids, maybe not by blood but they know no other father than me and I loved them better than any father would. You could ask anyone how I was with my children before this happened and they would tell you I was so loving with them. I never worried about responsibility problems because I have alwasy believed that love will always survive and if you love someone you will do what needs to be done to make the people you love happy. I will admite that I was not the best provider for my family. I had trouble keeping a job, always have. In part because I am slow, clumsy an dhave both dyslexia and ADHD. These are not excussess like many would think becaue if you read my school records all through out school that had been a problem I had to over come. I got better with time but never good enough.

Many of the routines of the family's life related to their community: the South Texas border. John rarely mentioned the border directly in his letters to me, but to picture the children one must factor in the ways they were shaped by their location. In Brownsville, it wasn't unusual that Julissa spoke only Spanish, even though she'd lived her entire life in the United States: her parents mainly spoke Spanish when together. Many children in Brownsville speak Spanish in their homes and neighborhoods and learn English once they arrive at kindergarten. Angela was from Mexico and had crossed the border illegally as a child, though this situation was also so common in the region that it was rarely mentioned when people spoke about the case.

Gloria Anzaldúa, the poet, called the border
una herida ­abierta—
an open wound. Bobby Byrd, the essayist, called it an alley between the home of a rich man and a poor man. The rich man needs the labor that the poor man and his family provide, but he also fears them and wants to control them.