Quantum Entanglement

Alberto Uribe

Pick a moment. Time and Space.       

Ejutla, Jalisco in 1974. Open up a little breakfast spot. Serve the classics. Keep it simple. Won’t charge much, just enough to keep the doors open. I’ll get to know the people, their comings and goings, just make myself available. I’ll open every morning, same routine, and keep a jar of molasses tucked underneath the counter. Wait for the same person, hoping he’ll come in. 

Eventually he will, and I’ll scramble up some eggs, not a speckle of salt, serve ‘em on a plate adorned with a dulcet umber ring. He’ll smile, nothing like the smile I’m used to, he’s still got all his teeth here, and his eyes still got that trademark raging intensity, not the warm cinders I remember fondly. He’ll thank me and go on his way. Promising he’ll return, overpaying to see if I’m honest, chuckling when I give him back the excess. 

He’ll be my favorite regular, and come in as often as he can, with his sharecropper wages, counting pesos, on the rare occasion letting me wave off his payment. Never often, can’t let him confuse it with a handout. Pride will run him out of here quicker than I’ll be able to fire off an apology.

One day, he’ll come in frustrated, and scoff as he takes his seat. Eggs shimmering in molasses, by then he’s already asked me to just bathe the plate in caña. He’ll tell me about his youngest daughter, the one with the stygian curled hair. Smart one, that kid, and so much like him. She’s been playing fútbol y hasta eso que no juega mal, pero el señor tiene miedo que se la lastimen, y cuando ya te robaron un hijo, se vuelve naturaleza estar a la defensiva. 

I’ll listen and tell him, it’s the delicate state that makes life so beautiful. Any little thing can go wrong, but what’s the point of it, if you’re never willing to chase a risk? Ganar o perder la vida se trata de hacer, no soñar con lo que nunca dejamos ser. He’ll grin, tip his tejana just slightly and toss an extra peso my way. Good way to live. He’s planning on stealing it, maybe pass down that wisdom as his own. No idea it was always his. 

He’ll keep coming in and sharing stories of his kids, real proud, and I’d remind him that as much as I enjoyed hearing about them, he should probably tell them this stuff, too. Not just the guy serving him breakfast every couple days. No dejes para mañana lo que podrás hacer hoy. He’ll scoff, as expected, mumble something into his chest, and I’ll refill his cafe, squeezing in half a meyer lemon. Hay Don Polo, no sea tan sensible. No ve que otros quisiéramos tener su suerte. No todos llegan a tener hijos en esta vida. Y aun así, padre no es el que engendra, sino el que cría.

I’ll wait for the day he comes in más enbroncado que el mismo diablo, rayandosela al compadre. Don Polo will tell me about the offer, too good to be true. El compadre offered to take his enchinadita to Autlan o Ciudad Guzman, get her into a proper education system, put her on a structured track, maybe push her to study medicine or science. He’ll swallow back the lump in his throat que le hace chiflar las palabras. She was there, he’ll say, and she started jumping, ecstatic, thrilled at the opportunity, begging him to let her go. He remembers the disillusion in her eyes, that sparkle just above the cornea collapsing in on itself as he said no. And he’ll insist to me that he can’t find the words to explain how much it’d kill him to lose another child. She wouldn’t come back, who would ever come back, to this, to the poverty and shame, the little he can give. 

Fighting the urge to hold his hand, reassuring him that this isn’t a goodbye, it’s a chance to let her grow, a risk that might be worth taking. He’ll look me in the eyes, and I’ll see the same ocular implosion. You don’t get it, he’ll mutter, and it’ll take a second, but by now, I’ve earned his confidence, and he’ll reminisce.

 His own padrino tried taking him away at around the same age, said I was smart, said I had potential, and wanted me to leave el rancho para la ciudad. Iba a cumplir mi sueño de estudiar, y mi papá me lo negó. Said think about the optics, yo en mis garras, draped in tattered clothes barely holding themselves together and talking about going away to study. Mi padrino ofreció pagarme los cambio de ropa, pero mi padre dijo que nosotros éramos pobres, pero con orgullo y no necesitábamos favores de nadie. No. There was no future for me in a city. I pleaded and he said no. Pero qué tal si tenía razón, sí lo hizo por mi bien, por protegerme del qué dirán? 

Wiping at the counter, cleaning an imaginary spill just to avoid my own inability to halt the waterworks, I’ll implore him to think about his daughter, not about what could happen, but about what she wants. Has he considered that yet? Drowning in everything that can go wrong, never bothering to try standing and realizing all the possibilities under his feet. Shallow water, viejon, just got to stand up. He’ll cough, and swipe his nose, following through against his cheek. Slick, thinking I won’t recognize the way he taught me to wipe away the tears. 

Don Polo will thank me, and I’ll remind him today, his meal was on the house. I’ll memorize his smile, one last time, knowing if my words, words I took from him and made my own, did their job, tomorrow I won’t be here. 

Moms will finally get her dream, get to study in the city, make a life for herself in medicine. Maybe she’ll marry, maybe she won’t. But she’ll get a job and start making enough money to move her family from Ejutla to the city alongside her, just like she did when she came to the States. She’ll never have to hear her mother say que se llenaba de ver a sus hijos comer o prometiendo que comió hace rato y no tenía hambre. Nunca tendría que ver a su padre caer a la cárcel por casi matar al hijo de su puta madre que mató a su hermano mayor. She will never need to ask her brother Roberto for help crossing the border. Won’t need to struggle cleaning houses for Palos Verdes elites. Won’t be pawned off by Roberto to my father. Blood shouldn’t be playing dealer with their sibling’s flesh. No gaslighting, no cycle of abuse. My mother will never meet my father. My mother will never have me. 

And just before my time ends, I’ll beg for one last leap, a jump into this future, hoping to see a glimpse of her, of my Moms happy. Not surviving, striving, living the life she deserved. Sentado en un café, vigilando a mi mamá, charlando con su hermana Adela, las dos sonriendo y disfrutando el sol. Y vería el brillo de su risa cósmica, sus dientes como alumbrantes estrellas en la obscuridad de su boca. Y tal vez nunca tuvo hijos, o tuvo varios, o solo uno. Pero no serían mis hermanos. Ellos no dejan de ser hijos del mismo señor que tú, y sin él, no existirían. 

If she never leaves Mexico, if she never meets my father, she never has Abe, she never has Alice. So I run it back, and it kills me to think I’m depriving Moms of her childhood dreams, but how the hell do I kill off my siblings in exchange? 

Different moment. Pick a different timeline. 

One in which you’re never born. Let it play out. Moms never has the accidental pregnancy. No February whoopsie, no November birth. No shared month with Grandpa. No reason for her to stay together with her husband after he cheats on her. Does he still cheat?

Anything that happened prior to 1998 still happens here. Family still gets buried. 1986, Moms still has to watch as her sister Maria loses her only child. 

If Maria’s daughter Erika still dies, Maria still develops cancer. And you’re forced into remembering, your birth isn’t the cause of your father’s cheating. He blamed it on Moms being too busy caring for her dying sister. Que lo descuido. He said men got needs. Moms’ sister still dies. She’ll never get to comb your curled hair. 

If Maria still dies, Moms will grieve, but she won’t have you to hold. Abe is seventeen, and Maria’s death broke him. Alice wasn’t permitted to cry by her father. Remember, he told her every tear shed holds your aunt a step back from heaven. And they’ll look for something, for some type of hope in the form of a toddler to help cheer up their days with the absolute chaos they bring. But you aren’t here. And you keep waiting to see, as you watch the timeline play out, for Moms to leave your father.

Kept hearing about how she stayed because of you. Le toca mantenerte. Es su deber. But if you don’t exist, she doesn’t have to stay, she can listen to Abe when he begs her to get the divorce. Promises he’ll step up. At seventeen, he can get a job. He’ll get two if he has to. He’ll take care of Moms and Alice. Still, she refuses, and you can’t make sense of it, watching it continue to play out exactly as it has. Nothing changing. Fixed. As if erasing your life didn’t even matter. 

Abe still blames himself. Did you forget he was the one who found what his dad was doing? You won’t be around to tell him it wasn’t his fault. In his last breath, Grandpa won’t ask him to help guide you the rest of the way. You won’t get to grow up to be his best friend, to be on the phone with him as his son is born. You won’t listen to him as he tells you how scared he is of losing his 23-week preemie who’s fighting to survive. You won’t be godfather to that little boy. You won’t be able to sneak away with Abe for five minutes to talk about trading cards or wrestling or futbol or comic books or anime or play a quick game on the Play. 

And you won’t be there for Alice either. When her daughter is born and she falls into the hospital a month later with acute severe pancreatitis, you won’t be there to hold her daughter during Zoom classes, or to keep her company at the hospitals. You won’t be around to annoy her, to bring out her competitive nature, to push her to kill it in her classes, to never let people drag her down. You won’t be godfather to her second daughter. You won’t be there to sit outside a random coffee shop and tell her just how much she means to you. Abe is your best friend, but Alice is your complement. The opposite you need to make you better. 

And then it hits you. What happens when one of us dies? If you were still here, at least one of you wouldn’t have to be alone cuando el primero se les adelante. Tendrían con quien arrinconarse. Un hombro para apoyar la cabeza en el rosario. Pero así, con solo el par, no habrá compañía, y el golpe va doler a puta madre. 

So it won’t work either. You can’t save Moms and have your siblings. Keep your siblings. You fail her. Give Moms her dream, and lose your brother and sister. Failure. You are an absolute failure. Bad brother. Bad son. Bad person. 

No. I’m not. I’m just looking in the wrong place. Take me back a couple months. 

Apartment living room. A couple days after navidad. Drinking coffee and playing video games with my siblings. Uncharted territory, I’m absolutely killing my brother in Madden. 

“Hey foo, you know what fucked me up the other day?”

“Nah, bad meat or something?” 

“No seas guey. Nah, for real. Got to wondering why it’s so damn hard to say I love you to these kids. Like I’m trying and I say it as much as I can, but it ain’t easy. Feels so damn heavy.”

Pressing pause on the game to focus on Abe as he stares a hole through the screen, “I get you. Ya ves, cuando te lo digo yo, you still get all tense. Como que you linked it in your head with romance or something.”

“It’s more than that though. Like I’m not used to hearing it. It sounds weird directed my way. You know, I don’t think I ever really thought about it before, but I can’t remember a single time I ever heard mom say that to me.”

“Damn. Come to think of it, I ain’t ever heard that from her either.”

Alice, sipping on her coffee, “I mean it’s to be expected though. She never heard it growing up. Como que no podemos esperar que de la noche a la mañana lo empiece a decir cuando no está acostumbrada a oírlo. I’m surprised y’all didn’t piece that one together.”

Silence. 

Link it all together. 

I can’t fix anything that already happened. I can’t heal Moms. And I shouldn’t. I look at my siblings and I see the love she taught us, the love she helped us learn to give each other and to the next generation, the love we reflect back to her. Y por mucho tiempo me deje engañar con la idea de que tenia que aliviar a mi madre, cuando en realidad solo es un puto miedo de perderla sin decirle que le agradezco. Agradezco el amor que me enseñó a cultivar dentro de mi. No necesita alivio, no necesita salvación y sabiendo eso puedo tomar lo que me da al precio que le costó. And I can tell her I love her, without expecting to hear it back, cause she shows it in her own way. A su manera, con su acciones, con su ser. I can write something like this and explore all the routes that lead me back to loving her. 

And when she doesn’t think anyone is listening, I can hear from behind the corner, as she hugs her grandchildren, and her voice trembles as it shakes the cobwebs, as she whispers for the first time, in the ears of the kids who someday will learn just how much se tuvo que superar para llegar a este punto en que ella les puede decir los amo. 

Alberto Saldaña Uribe is a high school dropout, a college graduate, and holds an MFA from Fresno State. His work can be found in HAIS: a literary journal, Flies, Cockroaches, & Poets, The Roadrunner Review, Variant Literature and Slippery Elm. Find him and his work on instagram @titioso98.

Art: Michael Thompson is a Chicago based artist who works in a variety of mediums including painting, collage, kite-making, philately and memory jugs. His website is: www.michaelthompsonart.com