Victim

by Andrew Boryga

I wasn’t trying to play the victim until the world taught me what a powerful grift it is.

It gives you something to pull from. A leg to stand on. I survived this…If you don’t have that but you have the right shade of skin, you’ll be okay, for now. If you don’t have the tragic story or the right skin color but you grew up in the right kind of place with the right kind of poverty, and have the right kind of people to back up that story for you, you might be able to work something out.

I was still pissed at Pops the day he died. I’ve never been able to reconcile that.

The kids around me were snatched up like fumbled footballs. My eyes remained fixed on Pops, who was twitching on the ground. I wanted to run over to him, but my legs felt as if someone had dipped them in cement. All I could do was stare.

“Yes,” I said. I thought of Pops’s admonishments. His ear flicks, head smacks, grins, stupid speeches. The things I’d always found so annoying, but perhaps because I always thought they’d continue, because I figured they’d be as constant as the sun rising and falling.

I don’t know if Pops’s dying was really the beginning of it all. But I do know that when I got back to the Bronx after his murder, I got my first taste of the high that comes from being a victim. In short order, I learned that I was no longer just a poor kid from the neighborhood like anyone else. I was one of those tragic kids.

Mom seemed confused by the offer but thanked my principal. She turned to look at me. “I don’t expect Javi to be needing that. I think it’s important for him to be staying in class and learning. Right, Javi?”

“Stop the bullshit, Javi,” Mom told me. “Go to class.”

And because I was missing math and science for a seemingly legitimate reason, my teachers in both classes gave me half the work and expected half the effort.

“Son, you have the life.” Gio cracked a forced smile that disappeared almost instantaneously. “Maybe. But at least you still have a mom.” Gio always defended Mom. Always took her side in shit. And always hit me with this same line.

“He’s a businessman. You see how he dresses. He got a nice car. Jewelry. Girls. What’s wrong with that?” “My Pops had shit like that, too. And you see how he ended up.”

It was only after I did what I thought were the basics—completed my homework on time, did reasonably well on tests, and had a pulse in class—that I was moved up to the honors class.

“Where is that fool?” I broke the news to him, just like I’d broken the news to the rest: He’d dropped out. He’d taken up selling drugs for Manny full-time. “Dope, weight?” “Not sure,” I said. “But he seems happy. And he’s making money.” If it were someone other than Victor, someone I was close enough with to confide in, someone like Gio, I would have shared my true thoughts: My best friend was headed down a destructive path.

“I understand why the world might make you feel that way. I can only imagine what it’s like for someone like you to go through life. But it is my job—my privilege, actually—to tell you that what you’re thinking isn’t true, Javier. The truth is that you can go to college wherever you’d like, even to the best schools our nation has to offer. And you know what else is true? Those schools would be lucky to have a student like you on their campus, Javier. In fact, those schools need students like you. Desperately.” Mr. Martin waited, as if he expected me to clap my hands or something.

The only problem with what Mr. Martin was saying was that none of the words he’d used to describe me lined up with the words I would have used. Poor? Underserved? From a tough place? As much as I liked attention and people feeling bad for me about my Pops and stuff like that, I had never thought of myself in those terms. Gio had a tough background. Naomi, a girl I’d dated for a month my sophomore year, who’d told me about the horrors of foster care, had a tough background. Shit, even Chris, a Chinese kid in my honors class who worked eight hours a day after school at his parents’ restaurant in the hood, had it worse than me.

The assignment before me felt different. It entailed commodifying all the shit I’d been through to see if it was worth anything to some committee hundreds of miles away. It was a new exercise that would soon become as normal to me as breathing.

You want to talk about challenges? Go interview your abuela. She’ll tell you how she used to sleep on a dirt floor in Puerto Rico. But, oh, of course, you’ll have to call her first. Which you never do. And which you’ll regret the day that she dies.” “That right there,” I said. “Grandma on a dirt floor.” I started to write. Mom slapped the pen out of my hand. “Do you know your abuela? She’d die if you thought of her as some poor, defenseless thing. She’s a warrior. She never begged nobody for nothing. Write that.”

“That is some great material to work with, Javier.” “What?” “You’re a first-gen student, son of a single mom who is, like, kind of an immigrant, and on top of all that, you’re a witness to your father’s tragic murder. I mean.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You need to emphasize all of this. The sacrifices your mom made for you. What it was like watching your dad die before your eyes. What it was like growing up without him. All that. That will blow the committee away. It blows me away.”

To decide between the two papers, I chose whichever cover seemed more dramatic. The catchier headline. The picture that made you want to know more. You could say that it was my first real education in clickbait. My first experience understanding what kind of writing, what kind of stories, attracted the most eyeballs and how to replicate it.

Manny had gone from being the mysterious older guy Gio talked about in school to the man who’d replaced his absent father.

“You dropped the books to bless us with your presence. How nice of you.” “I am amicable with both the illiterate and literate alike.”

One period before the meeting, I hurriedly wrote down some stuff about how going to college in the United States would fulfill a long-standing dream my Pops had had. How he’d mouthed, “Get an education, Javi, do it for me,” just before he took his last breath. How a star had then streaked across the sky, making it clear to me that this request was something I could not ignore. It was my first real attempt at playing with the truth.

“You need to contextualize things. Make it about the true goal here, which is getting into college. Getting access to more opportunities. So yes, your friend is part of that, but more important, for our purposes, is why you didn’t end up like him. Where did your paths diverge?”

I had a realization. The dude was genuinely moved. The little bit I’d shared about my life was akin to some sort of great Oscar acceptance speech to him. I’d made him feel something, and with his help, I could make things sound even better—at least to people like him. The fact that people like Mom, Pops, or Gio would find it absurd no longer mattered as much. Before Mr. Martin, I’d never attempted to put labels on things that simply happened to me or people close to me. To put them on scales and see which experience, which hardship weighed more. I had never attempted to list these experiences, arrange them, and make them into a good story with a “narrative arc.”

Mr. Martin pulled back the curtain. But my real transformation began at Donlon. It makes perfect sense now. Donlon was a whole new ecosystem where I could hone my new superpower. In fact, it was in one of my very first classes there—a required sociology class about race and ethnicity—that I learned something profound: I am a victim of systemic oppression. Or, I guess I should say, I was. Now I’m in some liminal space. Existing in some sort of reverse perjury. My immutable characteristics and “lived experience” no longer count for much. Never did I see that coming.

“If you have never had any of your family members experience being arrested or incarcerated, sit,” Professor Gleeson said. Everyone else sat. I almost fist-pumped. There I stood: the winner. Tito. I expected the auditorium to burst into applause. But the room was so quiet that if I’d farted, everyone would have heard. I wondered if I was supposed to make a speech or something. But Professor Gleeson simply motioned for me to sit.

I zeroed in on the Apple laptop in front of her. It was not only the latest model, it was covered entirely in stickers that seemed to demand vague but intense action: Fight the Power! Disrupt! Pay Your Fair Share!

I stared at that lonely dot behind the start line. I realized that he, and probably everyone else in that room, thought that little dot was me. They all thought I needed…support? Special attention? Gifts? Money? I wasn’t sure what, exactly, but it all sounded good.

I was no longer the kid who hadn’t traveled much, who didn’t understand how colors corresponded to the difficulty of ski slopes. I was someone special. Not just a survivor, but a victim of systemic oppression. Someone who deserved things, like perks, gifts, and grand prizes, just because. Someone entitled to these things.

I’d later come to use variations of the word racist as often as simple pronouns. But at this moment, I was still blind to its all-encompassing power.

It was Gio’s idea to switch to letters. They were cheaper, and, he said, he liked the fact that he could hold on to them, that he could revisit them and remember what life was really like.

Ricardo thanked Claudia for sharing. I took mental notes. I’d never before seen someone make something so seemingly small so dramatic. The artfulness impressed me. A few more people shared, recounting similarly benign injustices with riveting “narrative arcs,” as Mr. Martin would say: anger at having to check the “Hispanic” box on university forms, which didn’t seem like the kind of thing that merited applause for “getting through” the “triggering” experience; disgust and “severe mental fatigue” from a Colombian girl who said she was constantly asked about Pablo Escobar by everyone. (I held in the fact that he was my only reference point for the country, and that I probably would have asked her about him, too.)

Anais put an encouraging hand on my shoulder. I thought about telling them how I really felt: noticed, and elated about it. But I wanted to try out the moves I’d been studying while listening to everyone else. “I did feel uncomfortable,” I said, dipping my toe in. The sighs and nods in response felt like a hug.

In my eighteen years of life up to that point, I don’t think I’d ever blamed white people for anything. Aside from the Irish and the Italians and the Albanians and the Jews who also lived in the Bronx—all of whom I barely considered white because they were just as foulmouthed and poor as everyone else—I’d barely interacted with them.

But at the same time, some of what she said when she expounded on her favorite subjects—racism, sexism, colonialism, a whole lot of isms—sounded preposterous to me.

According to people at the LTC, the reason I got a C on my paper wasn’t because I couldn’t back up my thinking but simply because my professor was a racist.

“Wow, Javi. So, what, because you’re being a nice guy, being fucking decent, I’m just supposed to throw pussy at you? Men like you deserve it for doing the basics?” Anais shook her head, nostrils in full flare. “That’s what you’re telling me?” “I wasn’t saying that…” “Get out of my room, Javi. Please leave.”

I had in fact studied. Studied more than I had for any other test in my life up to that point. I wanted to impress Ms. Rivas. I felt joy hunching over the big computer in my bedroom and trying to arrange words in a way that would stand out to her.

“So you’re like a real drug dealer now? You’re really moving shit.” “You say it like I murder babies and eat their intestines.” “I’m just a little concerned. Like you know where that leads, right?

“You should at least graduate. The shit really isn’t hard. That book Ms. Rivas assigned was actually good.” Gio nodded. “I know. I read it. Piri Thomas was a G. Mad respect.” I was taken aback, more so than by the drugs in his book bag. “Why are you so surprised? I know how to read.” “So why didn’t you do the report?” “Because there’s no point. You see how that bitch talks to me. It wouldn’t matter either way. It’s the same thing with all these teachers. They don’t care. So why should I?” Gio shimmied and did a little dance. “I rather make this moneyyy.” Maybe I should have said more. Prodded harder. Provided encouragement. But the bus came. We were barely sixteen years old. So I laughed at his little dance, and I hopped through the back doors with him. I never bothered bringing up school again.

Were our “overseers” really just creating conditions for us to fall into certain traps? But how?

“I’m just saying. Maybe it’s not a bad idea. I never noticed before, but there are a lot of cops around here.” “Yeah, Javi. Because there are a lot of locos out here. You know that.” Mom finished pouring the oil and snapped a lid on the container. She held the oil up to the light, and I stared at the little particles of tostones floating around in it. Pleased, she stuck the container in the fridge. “If you don’t want to get locked up, don’t do no stupid shit,” she said. “That’s all you have to know about the police.”

“So you only date white guys now? Why? Do you think there is something inherently better about them?” Mom scoffed. “See. This is what I was talking about. Esta mierda.” I decided to try to channel Anais. To channel the LTC. “You obviously can’t see it for yourself, but you have internalized issues, Mom. Maybe we should talk about them. Maybe I can help you educate yourself.” Mom hit the brakes, forcing me to fly forward. She ignored the honking car behind her. “Internalized qué? Listen, nene. Don’t let that fancy school of yours fuck you up in the head, okay? I like Jared because he’s a nice man. He’s a professional with goals. He’s not a bum. And he treats me with respect. So what if he’s white? That doesn’t make me any less Puerto Rican. Don’t come around here talking about what I am and am not, and what I need to learn, entiendes? I’m the one who brought you into this world, not the other way around. Don’t get it twisted.”

I’m sure she wouldn’t be happy to hear me say this, but the truth is, were it not for her, my brilliant—albeit brief—hustle likely wouldn’t have reached the heights that it did.

“Your house is real nice. It feels peaceful. Quiet. I’m used to chaos and noise. I’d probably be worried about getting murdered if I lived up here.” “Well. That is what privilege buys you, Javi. Peace and quiet. A way to look past the real struggles that most people face. It’s delusional.” I chuckled. “It’s okay to have a nice house, princess. I’m not judging you. I’m just saying. It’s nice.”

“That was all Irish and Jewish back in my day. We didn’t go up that way. Things had a certain order to them, you see, despite the dysfunction. There were just certain streets you didn’t go down, certain neighborhoods you didn’t bother to set foot into.” “It’s sort of like that now, too,” I said, excited to bond over something. But I didn’t get very far. “No. It’s very different than when I was growing up. It’s not the same at all, trust me.”

“I’m not coming at you. But you are going to graduate soon. And then what? My dad is annoying, but he’s right.”

“Do you know they’ve never had a Latino columnist in their entire hundred-year history? Isn’t that fucked up? You could be the first. In fact,” she said, pausing to think, “you could use that in your pitch. At this point, with everyone all of a sudden caring about diversity, you could basically demand that they print you.”

Anais and I workshopped the title of it, Brown Boy Observes, and came up with a short description: “A minority student making his way through a white supremacist campus and world shares his valuable insight on day-to-day campus life, challenging the status quo, bearing witness, and speaking truth to power.” I thought it was a little silly and didn’t really know what I was “bearing witness” to, but it worked.

only things I could come up with seemed so small in comparison: being asked if I’d been shot while growing up, being asked if I was Mexican because it was clear that that was the one type of Latino some white people knew existed, being asked if I spoke Puerto Rican. Shit, that, when I wasn’t talking about it at the LTC with a whole lot of gravity, made me laugh more than anything else.