How to Leave Hialeah

Men Who Punched Me in the Face

1 0 1 Men Who Punched Me in the Face The other guys on the football team called him Vick the Dick, and he said it was because he had a huge one, but I wouldn’t have known then since his was the first one I ever saw. Victor was half Cuban—half decent, my dad used to say— and half some sort of Venezuelan-Ecuadorian mix. My mother declared him The Best Looking Guy To Ever Talk To Me three minutes after meeting him. He had this hard-line chin and perfect eyebrows that looked like a professional Hialeah beautician had sculpted them. He never got carded when he ordered beer at El Rey Pizza. He could grow a beard in two hours. After a game, he smelled so much like man sweat and dirt that I worried just smelling him would make me pregnant. He was light brown but 1 0 2 M e n W h o P u n c h e d M e i n t h e F a c e close enough to white that my abuela didn’t hate him. He bit his nails down so much that skin grew over top of them, so he’d chew on that until he ripped off spit-able hunks. Sometimes I worried that he’d get germs in me because his hands were so raw from how he ate them, but that was the kind of thing I never said to him because I didn’t want him to realize we didn’t belong together. A few hours before our first date, I couldn’t stop noticing in the mirror that I was growing a mustache, or at least, the shadow of one. The dark hair on my arms had magically migrated to my face, and in the light of the bathroom, it seemed more pronounced than ever. And because I thought that maybe Victor might kiss me—I held unreasonably optimistic ideas about love before meeting him—I went through my mom’s medicine drawer and found her Nair. After wiping the caked cream from the ridge of the bottle , I applied a thick, even layer over my entire face, covering everything except my forehead and nose just to make sure I didn’t miss a hair. I was either too sensitive or no good at telling time; either way, the cream burned everything, red blotches blending in with the light purple scars of my old zits. Later I tried to hide what I’d done by dragging a sponge soaked with foundation across my stinging skin. Victor did not say What happened to your face? until we left the movie, like that was the first time that night he actually saw me. I said, I must be allergic to something. He said, I hope it’s not me, and he finally kissed me, in front of everyone leaving the theater, messed up skin and everything. That moment, coming right at the beginning of Us, made me think for a long time he was sweeter than he really was. To be honest, it was closer to a slap than a punch, and I only stayed with him afterward because that’s what I kept telling myself : it was a slap, not a punch, and every time I pictured it, his fingers opened up more, my memory making it over into something I could allow. I told myself Victor was a very emotional kind of person—the rush that made him hit me was the same one that made him throw me over his shoulder in the school hallway and carry me to my next class. And he started off being okay with me not wanting to have sex until marriage. He took it upon himself to teach me how to give blowjobs. I was sixteen and way behind most of the girls in my grade at Hialeah Lakes High. Part of me M e n W h o P u n c h e d M e i n t h e F a c e 1 0 3 was relieved to get it over with, and with a guy who other girls wanted and who didn’t mind being my tutor. Victor was not smart or creative, but he lifted women off the ground when he hugged them and talked about how much he loved his mother in front of my mother. Mami liked him so much she’d lie...