Andrew Zornoza

Fiction Archives

The Dishwashing Game
By Andrew Zornoza
from Volume7 Issue2

Ángel fed the dragon. I stood before it, the steam from its lips enveloping my fingers and turning them raw and red.

. . . Cinco, uno y un empate.
Sabes que pasa contigo?
No.
En que se parece a ti a un arbol de navidad y a un sacerdote?
No se.
Los tres tienen bolas del adorno. . . .

            Ángel was my brother. He liked to tell dirty jokes while we raced fast down the canyon, shifting the truck into neutral so we could run clean and cold. Me, I was the clever one, a pisser, he'd call me in his heavy accent, Man, he's a pisser, a real pisser. Putting my hands out the window I'd scream at the wind, Caray! Caray! and he'd laugh with big teeth, holding my knee with one hand and the wheel with the other. When the truck wouldn't start, I'd sit up front with the keys in the ignition and he'd push from the back. Then he'd race to the front and touch the magic button—this knob that the hood used to rest on before it got all bent up—and say, Now buey! Now! As I turned the key, I'd slip the gearshift into second. Sometimes the car would start and sometimes it wouldn't, and when it wouldn't he'd say, My finger must've slipped off the botón, like he couldn't believe it, and we'd try it again until the engine turned and it was popped into gear.

           Ángel hated our bosses. Mida a este bolillos, he'd say with clenched teeth banded into a smile. He called me a bolillo too, because I was pale, white enough to burn when we went up into the canyons to fish—the skin later peeling off in translucent strips that I pushed from my pillow onto the bedside table.

            Together we worked at a restaurant in town washing dishes. Tending the dragon is what we called it, Ángel loading and me unloading, the room always hot with steam and the dishes burning like fire. The dragon was an industrial, eight foot long aluminum box, into which ran a conveyor belt. Above the machine were hooks to hang the empty dish racks. Along the left side were three rails where we kept the dishes when they were dirty. On the right we kept the clean racks for unloading. Inside the machine, high pressure water jets and detergent hosed down the dishes before hot air blasted them dry.

            The two of us played games to pass the time. Using the dirty glasses as pieces and one of the large plastic washing racks as a board, we'd trade moves all through the shift. The game was a lot like what they call Othello, where you surround your opponent's pieces to make them your own. Each rack had eight slots across, intersected eight times—a total of sixty-four glasses. When the rack got full, we counted the glasses to see who won. I was always glasses up while Ángel played with glasses down. After he set the slotted crate on the conveyor belt, it would jerk along and slowly come through to my side of the washer. Adding my glass, I'd push it back, sliding it along the rails attached to the side of the dishwasher, putting it in line with all the other dishes that needed to be rewashed. Even when we were really busy, Ángel would somehow manage to set up a rack, four solitary glasses coming over the line, two up and two down, the way we always started. Sometimes, when we had almost finished a game and the carton was close to full, I'd mistakenly send the glasses out to the waiters. Que pasa tio? Ángel would ask, already knowing the answer, watching my face as I realized what I had done.

Ángel always played for the big scores, jumping two or three of my glasses at once, zigzagging across the middle of the board. He'd hoot and holler if I made a mistake, turning the glasses over high in the air so I could see them, the steam arching sideways across his head as he pushed them loudly back into place. When the rack came through I'd stall it at the end of the conveyor belt, holding it on my hips, waiting for the glasses to cool while the burning water dripped off the ledge and down onto the floor in little shimmering pools. I tried to play for the sheltered spots in the corners, but Ángel usually just surrounded them, my few lone glasses cycling through the machine again and again, stranded and slowly filling with soapy water.

            •                                               •                                               •

            In the summer, we'd stay up late at night after work, listening to the baseball games on the Spanish speaking radio station. The announcers' voices were always quick with excitement and kept pace with the winds that whistled against the house. After the game, Ángel would curl up in the corner of the bed and smoke out of a plastic milk carton half filled with water, blowing the thick fumes across my feet. When he was through we'd kneel in front of the window where we had made a little altar. Photos of ball players, like Rivera, Williams, and Martínez, were taped to the sill and fluttered while he lit the tall candles encapsulated in painted glass, one with a pastel Jesus surrounded by his disciples and one of Santa Maria holding a little child, the Lord's prayer on each.

            Those days were good, and when Ángel fell asleep I would curl up with him and feel fine pressed flush against his legs. Sometimes he would wake angry and screaming, calling me Peso-ojo, beating my shins with the side of his hands. Then he'd go rummaging for the keys, start the truck and spin the tires, driving dust into the side of the house and leaving me wide awake. Most nights though, he never said anything and often pretended to sleep when he wasn't, his shallow breaths fogging the window in small overlapping circles.

            Ángel liked to play pool, but he wasn't as good at it as I was. We played at the bar in town shooting five dollar games against the tourists and fishermen. Ángel had a little pocketknife he always kept in his jeans and he liked to shave the cue of his stick with it, his hand shaking as he squeezed towards his thumb. My hands are rock solid, but Ángel's, they twitched like crazy. He'd take out the knife whenever he made a dirty shot, daring the other team to say anything, watching for the bartender with one eye and his shaking hands with the other.

            When the bar cleared out we'd play between ourselves. Ángel had this game he liked to play, he called it pool Americano. The red balls were the Indians, the yellow Asian, the green Irish, and so on. The stripes were the mixed breeds. The last ball on the table was the winner. One night, the purple striped ball was left and he shouted up and down, The half gays win! The half gays win! purposely shaking the first 'the' with his voice, like the radio announcer did whenever the Yankees won.

            Ángel liked to talk about leaving town. We'd play pool for money, hustling, he'd say. Hermanos. But we weren't that good.

            Sometimes Ángel and the others would call me Peso-ojo, after the scar between my eyes that looked like the edge of a coin. The day it happened, I'd brought my gun down to the arroyo, to the place everybody used to go to shoot. There was a junk heap of wrecked cars, couches, and loose tires that faced the river there, making a nice range. The older white kids would use the sandy section of the bank right behind the trash as a meeting place, listening to music on their portable transistor radios as they sat on the ripped out seats of a stripped Suburban, or swam in their small, round groups. Until I heard their cars starting up to leave, I would walk up and down the river looking for fish. On the morning I had the accident though, the whole place was empty. So, I unpacked my gun and strung up some coca-cola cans with twine, hanging them like Christmas ornaments on a pine that faced the rocky bluffs. After I missed with my first three rounds, I started shooting with my left eye and hit the next two cans. Ángel had always said I was left eyed, but I usually had trouble making the switch with my hands. Sighting along a top branch I saw an old wasp's nest high in the tree and took aim. When I let loose I knew I had made a good shot, but I got pushed back to the ground with a jerk as the barrel slipped out of my hands. I stared at the sky for a moment, packed up the gun, put it in the nylon case, and started slowly back to the truck. There was a low humming noise inside my head and the bridge of my nose felt funny, but I didn’t want to touch it-—I just watched the ground under my feet slip by. The sun-bleached beer cans, socks, and foil condom wrappers that lay trampled into the dirt wavered like the floating tips of icebergs. As I got to the side view mirror, I saw a red hole the size of a quarter had been pushed into my forehead, and that pieces of the rifle's scope were clinging to my skin. When I woke up next, they say I was lying there on the road, screaming at the sky, beating the dirt with the side of my face.

            Ángel bandaged the wound and we stayed up late that night. He patted my hair while using tweezers to pick the shards of plastic out of my forehead. We used the rifle’s scope as a candle holder after that, the melted wax covering the dried blood in thick waves.

            When we worked at the restaurant we'd eat there. A dishwasher special, they called it. We fed scraps to the dogs on our breaks, sitting on the milk cartons out in the back, smoking cigarettes of rolled tobacco. When the customers wanted their food taken home, Ángel would wrap it up loosely in aluminum foil and I'd fold and bend the thin sheets into little swans. The waiters called them loch-ness monsters and they'd shout from behind the kitchen, Two loch-ness monsters for table six! Two monsters to go!

            After my accident with the rifle, I wouldn't shoot the big guns anymore, but Ángel bought me a little 9 millimeter for my seventeenth birthday. Eventually, I went back down to the arroyo. Then, using the smaller pistol, we started to shoot from the car. Parked at the end of the road we'd let loose at all the scattered trash, and sometimes, if Ángel had been drinking, he'd do donuts in the dirt. With all the dust rising so that everything was obscured, I'd yell out the window, shooting through the clouds, emptying the clips as fast as I could. Then Ángel would start shouting too, saying, Andele! Andele Tonto! and things like that, imitating the Westerns we watched on TV when the baseball season was over.

            That was the year New York won the World Series. Williams carried them down the stretch and then, after the last out, the third baseman with a mustache went riding around the outfield on a policeman's horse. We watched the game at a house in the neighborhood, Ángel ignoring me like he always did when we hung out with the others. The TV was unfocused and would alternate between black-and-white and color. Our neighbor, fat Chuchon, sat next to it, knees tight against its side. When he'd tried walking away the screen got all snowy, so someone made him stay up there all night long, holding onto the hanger with both hands—one giant human conductor.

            We were drinking during the game, tossing the cans we finished into the corner. Out of the trash, I had picked up one of the empty cardboard beer cases and got all caught up in looking at it. Fish of all different sizes were painted onto the cover, their scales glossy on the waxy cardboard. The big fish in the middle got my attention because it was so strange looking. Ángel and I fished a lot, and I took pictures of the catches with a disposable camera, cutting out the good ones and putting them in a fishbowl filled with gravel. When I was younger, and no one was home, I'd spread the cutouts on the floor, picking one and pushing it along the carpet, avoiding the bigger fish and pretending to eat the smaller ones. But this fish on the box, I'd never seen one like it. It had the shape of a bass, the color of a trout, and the whiskers of a catfish. So, I stood up and said, Mira, Mira este pescado, it's broken. There was silence first, but then someone laughed. It's a half-breed. Hey, Peso-ojo he can see pretty good! he cried. Looks more like a three or four breed, someone else said. Then everybody was laughing, Ángel too. So I cut out the fish and strung it around my neck. We were all superstitious then, especially me, and I held the fish the whole game, hoping it would help the Yankees win.

            When the game was over everybody was having a good time watching the highlights. They did a little show on Mariano Rivera, the Yankee pitcher, and I remember they interviewed this manager from Minnesota. He's impossible . . . unhittable . . . you can't hit when he's in there. He should be put in a higher league somewhere . . . a higher league, he stuttered, and the way he said it was so funny that everybody was on the floor laughing all over again. And me, I was hugging Ángel, and we were both happy, not worrying about anything.

                        •                                               •                                               •

            Work was hard and we hardly made any money. We got five percent of the waitresses' tips, and that never came to very much. Ángel was always thinking that we were being cheated. Many nights I had to collect his tip because it was only two or three dollars and he was too embarrassed and angry to take it. A pack of cigarettes, he'd say, that's what we work for, that's all these lousy bolillos give us.

            The dishwashing room was separate from the kitchen, and Ángel and I spent our time alone, the food coming on trays through a hole cut into the wall. Sometimes Ángel would sit on one of the stools and stare out through the opening, leaving me with all the work. He had a crush on one of the waitresses, but she never let it come to anything. Suzy was the waitresses’ name. She liked me, patting me on the head each morning, but she'd never talk to Ángel and that got him upset. She wore big baggy blouses but tight, little skirts and you could see the bulging curve of flesh around her panties when she bent down. I think she knew that Ángel watched her, but I was never sure. Ángel had a picture of her, taken at a party for the reopening of the restaurant after they had done some renovations. In it she was dancing, holding one arm up to say 'how' like the Indians did in the movies, her teeth flashing through her lipstick as she stared right at the camera. Her pupils were so red and small they looked like little colored marbles. Ángel hid the photo in our bookcase between the old magazines, and late at night when he thought I was asleep he'd take it out and bring it to bed with him, curling his body within a circle of moonlight streaming through the window.

When they renovated the restaurant, they didn’t touch the dishwasher. But it wasn’t long before it went. Ángel and I knew it was on its last legs—we kept a roll of duct tape for stopping leaks and a handful of fuses for the electrics that shorted out. Luckily, it was a slow shift without much work the day the old machine broke down. It just stopped and quit. Nothing we could do got it working again. Before the restaurant got a new one they wanted it thrown away to make room, so the next day we took it apart to fit it out the door. First, we counted all the little scratches we had made along the aluminum guide-rails. Ángel had etched a line on the left side for each one of his dishwashing game victories, and I had made my marks on the right. The score was 261 to 114, Ángel having won a whole lot more of the games than I had.

We wrote down the numbers so that we could start from the same count on the new machine. Then we got screwdrivers and hammers and began to disassemble the washer. After the owners left, we started getting into it, Ángel pounding with his hammer and then me pounding with him, softly at first, but then getting louder and louder. We began laughing, picking up the beat with the hammers, and going at it pretty hard. Finally we really got going crazy and started bashing the machine, twisting the metal into strange shapes, jumping up on it and kicking it, Ángel shouting, Matamos el Dragon! Matalo! Matalo!

            When we were done, we dragged it into the back of the truck and sat in the cab exhausted, panting with the heat. The washer was heavy and, as we drove out the back, sparks flashed from where the muffler bounced along the seam of asphalt between the driveway and main road. We got home and put the biggest section of the machine against the side of the house, scraping two narrow rows into the earth as we dragged it through the dust. Later, we broke off the tongue-like conveyer belt and used the long, boxy body of the dishwasher to play baseball. I struck out too fast to get to bat for very long, but when I was pitching, I'd throw the gray tennis balls at the machine's square throat with all my strength, hoping to hear the whoosh of Ángel's bat and the sound of the ball bouncing back and forth inside against the aluminum walls—a perfect strike.

            When winter came that year, snow drifted upon the dishwashing machine in long, smooth piles. It would be dark outside even before we began the dinner shift and, once snowmobile season started, the sharp buzz of motors and the gnashing of shifting gears filled each night with noise. There were shots too, real loud and distinct in the cold air. Early in the mornings the hunters and other sportsmen would eat at the restaurant, ordering eggs with extra toast, lumbering about with fuzzy, orange caps and two-day-old stubble. Nailed to the insides of their extended cab pick-up trucks, the furs of small game animals lay taut, stretched out across the frosted windows.

            Except for fish we never hunted for anything. When I was younger my father once bought us two wooden slingshots from the Indian trading post in town, but we never could hit anything with them. Ángel had carved the wood of the handles so that each looked like a woman without a head, chiseling out large breasts and a divot between their closed legs. Outstretched around empty space, their thin arms held the sling. I remember not being able to shoot past the fenceposts from the porch and my father swearing while Ángel looked away. Toque con fuerza, my father said. Duro, como un hombre. But the pebble kept coming out of the pouch and falling on the floor. Eventually, he picked it up and put it in my hand. Papa, usa una piedra mas grande, este cabra no puede, Ángel said, scratching the dirt with a stick while he looked away. Behind me my father grasped my fingers and curled them around the woman's breasts, pressing them there with strong, hard pressure. Then, with his other hand, he grasped my stomach from between my legs, squeezing a little and holding me there, using his forearm to arch me backwards slightly. Eso es hombre. Ángel, tenga un hombre en mano? Ángel looked over, watching my hand around the handle. Tira, Papa said. Tiralo! I pulled back far and the stone flew over the fence. Okay! he said, slapping my back. I could hear my shot tumble a little in the grass, and felt my thumb throb where the stone had grazed it on the way out. Ángel, cuidate este hombre peligroso, my father said as he turned inside, leaving me and my brother alone on the porch, staring at each other across the concrete.

         There was a picture of our father in the glove compartment of the truck. Dark, but not serious, he is sitting on a couch gesturing towards something across the room. I don't recognize the room or the furniture, but there are some Christmas lights on the wall and outside the window is a white Chevy. Hanging from the rearview mirror is a scented cardboard tree. Underneath it, a small crack winds its way across the windshield.

                       •                                               •                                               •

            This second washer we got was really something. The dishes came out looking like they were brand new. Nice and dry even, almost rubbery to the touch. I started to win a lot at the dishwashing game once we got it, which was strange, because I had never really beat Ángel at it before. When he was paying attention he didn't lose. I really only won when things were going sour for him. And on those nights, he would be out in the truck even before we had finished work. I'd be left to scratch my lines on the machine and clean the floors, punching us both out on the clock.

            Sometimes Ángel didn't care about anything, he'd just put the heat on in the car, hold the steering wheel, and look out the window. But there wasn't anything to see, just the wall and an ice machine.

            The first weekend after the snow began to melt, Ángel, Chuchon, and I went fishing. We drove the truck right up beside the creek and with the rods hanging off the back of the bed I tied on the lures. Ángel let some water out of the cooler and dragged it to the bank. We had three rods but only two reels so Chuchon just threaded his pole with line and tied the end to his belt, leaving some loops of slack outside his jeans. Donde esta el radio? asked Ángel. Chuchon looked up and glanced back towards the truck. I remembered leaving it by the house door, underneath my jacket. No se, I said. Ángel flipped his lure in the water and reeled it right back in, looking up at the sky. Too much sun, he said, and turned to walk upstream. I could hear him slapping open the brush as he passed through it. Chuchon climbed up on the big rock that lay halfway across the creek and sat there, letting the fly float on the current then whipping it back when he ran out of line. He took off his shoes and dangled his feet down the round edge of the boulder. I slowly rolled up the cuffs of my jeans. I forgot the radio, I said. Chuchon flexed one foot upwards off the rock and shrugged. Jerking the rod back again, he watched the fly slide down the current.

            Late that afternoon, I caught a fish while wading just a few yards down and across from Chuchon. I was in a small pool that had been formed by the overflow of water before the stream funneled down a short waterfall. As I looked across the pool to the other side, where Chuchon let his lure float until it hit the falls, I saw it. It was right there under the surface, before the whitewash and parallel with the current—a grayish trout lying perfectly still, like a long, smooth finger. It wasn't paying any attention to Chuchon's fly. I tried to get around it some, but slipped on a flat rock where the water got deep, and sent a few strong waves rippling across the stream. Luckily, the fish didn't move a bit. So I came in from the side and flipped my leader towards the opposite bank. Then I reeled in slowly, dragging line along the sandy shoal first, then turning the rod upstream to keep the bait from floating too far once it got into the current. The hook passed just a few inches from the nose of the fish. Suddenly there was a splash and the line jerked tight. I brought the pole around real slow and then just pulled the trout right out of the water. It was a pretty fish. Tiny, golden circles lined the upper parts of his pale, white belly and across his middle a set of tightly interlocked silvery scales merged gradually into a dark blackish-green ridge of muscle. There wasn't a single mark on him. He was young, too. Underwater, he had seemed much bigger. I worked the hook out of its mouth and the fish flopped back in the water, disappearing instantly. Era un poco chiquitin, Chuchon said. I nodded and sat down on a rock, wringing out the cuffs of my jeans. Then I could hear the car door slam and Ángel appeared, climbing up the boulder to stand by Chuchon. You catch something? he asked. El lo deja, Chuchon said. Why? Ángel asked, looking down into the water. It was too small, I answered. We could have had it for dinner anyway, Ángel said. We can eat at work, I told him. There is no fish at work, he said, and walked away, making loud noises as he clambered back into the car.

            Ángel drove home looking straight ahead, not saying anything and shifting the gears with short strokes. Slouching way back into his seat, he put the baseball game on the car radio, turning it up so we couldn't even hear the noises of the engine. When he took the turn up the canyon, he took it real slow and lazy, the front wheel brushing against the tall grass growing along the shoulder. The front wheel sank a bit and he sat up to jerk the steering wheel. The rear wheels came around, but then we started sliding down the bank. Suddenly, I felt Ángel's shoulder against my side and there was beer suspended in midair. Then a tree came through the windshield and the truck stopped. Chuchon dragged himself out the window and I followed. I felt all sticky from the beer and I was shaking a little as we walked the mile and a half to the house. I kept turning around to tell Ángel to hurry up, but he wasn't there. We'd left him in the truck.

            Chuchon called the police. There's been an accident, he said, I think you should send someone.

            Later, I wondered why we hadn't run back to the house. But it wouldn't have mattered. The doctors said it wouldn't have made any difference.

                        •                                               •                                               •

            When I finally made it back to work, I didn't last for very long. I thought I could never hate my brother, but now I couldn’t help myself. On my second day I began hurling the dirty glasses at the steel dishwashing machine. One after another, I threw every glass until they were all gone, pitching them into the new washer. The manager wouldn't listen to anything I said, he just looked at the broken shards while calling for help. Inside I could hear people putting down their forks. I could hear the waiters coming, setting their trays on the bar, their voices humming. But none of that mattered; nothing was going to bring him back. I had lost my brother.

When I got home I crawled into the mouth of the old dishwasher. The long rubber flaps brushed stiffly against my back as I turned sideways to drag myself inside. My hands crunched along some frozen leaves and twigs that lay piled together like a nest. Tucking my knees into my chest, there was just enough room for my whole body. The wind outside groaned like heavy machinery, and it seemed like dishes should be passing by my feet, hot steamy water jetting out onto my back. I started to play the dishwashing game inside my head. I tried keeping a piece of me separate, making Ángel's moves for him, watching as he flipped the glasses in midair before pushing them in. But it just wasn't the same. It was too hard to keep track of which glasses had gone where. I fumbled with my lighter, but my hands were too cold to get it to stay lit for very long. I tried to light the nest of leaves on fire with it, but they were all encrusted with ice and the spark wasn't catching. Throwing the lighter out of the machine, I breathed onto the stainless steel wall and wrote Ángel's name in the fog. Then I pulled the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my hands and began to pile snow across the opening. I took off my shoes and wedged them in at the top. It got real quiet and dark. I held my breath—waiting.

Andrew Zornoza is a young writer who lives and works in the Mission district of San Francisco. The Dishwashing Game is his second published story and is part of a completed collection entitled Americana. His first story, Gas, appears in the Summer 2003 issue of Confrontation. He is currently at work on a novel and a second collection of stories.