The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts by Laura Tillman Read Free Book Online Page B

punch that hit him right in the face and I knocked him out.
    John went outside with his two brothers. When they came back, their father was gone.
    My mom would pick guys ever since that would hit her and I’d defend her from about 4 of her boyfriends. But my father I rarely saw except those 5 times within 8 or 9 years from when they separated until I got arrested for this.
    Hilda’s sister Genoveva Ramirez testified that there was a sudden change in her behavior. She’d been a good mother, a provider, and then “she just turned around and went for the worst.” John’s brother remembered Hilda’s calling John mongolo as a child, a slang word equivalent to “retard.” Dr. Brams found that the more John clung to Hilda, the more she rejected him. John remembered that Hilda’s “most important priority was crack.”
    During John’s high school years, he found some companionshipand purpose in extracurricular activities. He had a talent for dancingand participated in parades during Charro Days, doing traditional Mexican folk dances with his classmates, and Juan said John’s abilities stood out. He also performed choreographed dances with a group of about six other teens at neighborhood parties, including the elaborate birthday parties for fifteen-year-old girls called quinceañeras . Memorizing the steps required intense concentration. John remembered performing almost every week, sometimes multiple events in the same weekend. He did backflips; he liked the challenge and the attention they brought. The dancers would split the money they received.
    John was then on the swim team and in the ROTC, or Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, as well. As a kid who was always different—in special classes, struggling with behavioral problems—he’d found a couple of spaces where he could belong, wearing the same uniform as his classmates, and was given positive reinforcement. The ROTC meant even more than that—it was a gateway to joining the military and therefore resolved the question of what John would do once school ended.
    His swim coach, Luis Ortega, still worked at Porter High School when I contacted him. He’d been there since 1979. With his clear and intentional responses to my questions, it was easy to imagine him teaching Advanced Placement government classes, as he did when he wasn’t coaching. He punctuated pauses with a question of his own—Am I making sense?—the refrain of a teacher determined to keep his students engaged.
    Ortega told me that many students didn’t know how to swim when they joined the team, and everyone who did join was providedwith a uniform, cap, goggles, bag, and a warm-up suit, free of charge. Though John wasn’t on an especially winning team, he made a lasting impression on Ortega as a diligent teammate who led workouts and dependably showed up for practice. He wasn’t particularly tall, but Ortega called the good-looking, fit young man Big John, to mentally build him up. After his having been called many variations of “stupid” at home, it’s easy to imagine how much this must have meant to him.
    â€œHe wasn’t a troublemaker. He wasn’t a kid we could say had major issues, at least I didn’t see that,” Ortega said. “He was a kid that was very much involved in taking care of his image; he was always in great shape. He worked hard in the water. He wasn’t the greatest of swimmers at all, but one of the better kids that we had in terms of being committed to what we did, working out, never complained, did everything we asked.”
    Ortega said that it was almost more common for students at the school to be poor, to struggle outside of Porter’s walls, than not. The swim team, like the basketball or football team, served many functions for the athletes. It was a way to avoid neighborhood gangs and other truant behavior. The swimmers were so exhausted after a day