The problem isn’t your girlfriend

By Elizabeth Monreal

The problem isn’t your girlfriend, the problem is you don’t know how to break up right. But you can’t not listen when your mom and your tías are always telling you that women are crazy. That they’ll do anything to trap you. You thought your girlfriend would be happy you got into your dream school, but all she did was cry. Your mom was right.
Tell yourself you’re an idiot one more time (because you are), but you have to do this. You’re too smart not to go to college. Your girlfriend is probably at the clinic by now. Or maybe she’s not. Maybe she’s still waiting for you. Either way, it’s easy for her—she’s not going to college.
You’re still at practice, but you’re slow today. Something about the word “abortion” sounds heavy and final like the buzzer going off when the game is over. To make matters worse, these aren’t suicides or anything like that. This is a practice game. The coach says it’s not serious, but he always does this when he’s thinking about changing the line-up, so the only reason you should be letting the ball leave your hands is to score. Don’t give anyone else the spotlight; don’t let them steal your opportunity.
Ignore the urge to pass, to say you have to go, and not wait for the coach to clear you. Because if you go to the locker room and your teammates ask where you’re going, you won’t know what to say. And if you find your phone buried beneath books and clothes in your backpack (you don’t have money for a duffel bag, whatever) and see all the texts and missed calls from your girlfriend, they’ll make you want to throw up and you don’t know how to throw up right.
If you call your brother (on the off chance that he answers) you won’t tell him everything anyway. You’ll just end up talking in circles like you always do when you need him and he’s not there. He’ll laugh and congratulate you like it’s all a joke, but then he’ll call you a pendejo and something about the way he says it will make you feel like you’re five years old and don’t know anything. And you can’t say “abortion”—that sounds violent. But don’t say that you had a fight—that sounds violent too.
And you aren’t violent. You’re actually one of those good kids, which is rare, for a Mexican. One of those smart kids who gets straight A’s and actually does everything his mom tells him to. You go to church and pray every once in a while and not just when you want something from God. You don’t smoke and that’s good. But you don’t drink either which is bad. Aren’t you supposed to have like this crazy tolerance for tequila? Alcohol, you’ve heard, is great for lowering libido and messing up sperm quality. If you were anything like your brother, you’d probably be throwing up for a better reason. But you hate drinking and you don’t yell or curse at your family. You’re good at basketball, which is the wrong sport to be good at (your mom would much rather have you be good at soccer or boxing or one of those heritage sports she can brag to your tías about), but that’s okay because you speak English so well. You’re kind of white.
Your brother will say that you’re a stupid fucking idiot and even though your mom calls him a good-for-nothing, you still idolize him so that’ll hurt. But don’t cry, just let him yell at you. You need someone to yell at you right now. After he’s finished, say what your mom always says: “Girls are crazy.” Tell him that you tried to break up with her. Like, come on—you’re going to college. You have a full-ride basketball scholarship to your dream school—do you even know how crazy that is? That never happens for Mexican kids. And your girlfriend, she started crying and you felt bad and because you’re a good kid, you do stupid things out of love. But that was her plan all along, she was trying to trap you.
You don’t really swear but you’ll be on the phone with your brother and the words will just come out. Slut. Bitch. Whore. Insane. They’re not even true. You love your girlfriend, right?
But when you had that fight—argument, you mean—you kind of pushed her a little. Not hard or anything, but it surprised you because you’d never done anything like that before. She fell onto her bed—but not because you pushed her hard, you just caught her off guard. This is how you know it wasn’t bad: she didn’t stop to acknowledge it or anything, she just got right back up and started yelling in your face again like it hadn’t even happened. You held her by the arm, not super tightly, but just enough to let her know you were serious. You didn’t force her to do anything, you just made things clear for her.
Your brother will be sober because this is too important to talk about drunk. He’ll remind you that the problem isn’t your girlfriend, the problem is that you don’t know how to wear a condom right, idiot. What an idiot. He didn’t know they gave full-ride scholarships to idiots. You don’t know what’s worse, having him talk to you sober or having him talk to you drunk. Either way, the conversation never goes the way you want it to. Once you hear his voice, nothing ever seems that important anymore.
So don’t call him. You can’t tell him. You want him to yell at you, but you don’t want him to know. You care what he thinks about you even though no one thinks anything good about him. You miss having him around.
Your mom is always saying that you’re the reason she came to the United States. None of you are supposed to be here, but you make everything worth it. She’s scrubbing toilets and learning English for you. And if you followed in your brother’s footsteps by dropping out of school or becoming an addict, she would be heartbroken, but not completely surprised. Everyone kind of expects you to fail. It’s in your blood or something. It’s already such luck that you made it this far. But if you ruined your life over a girl, then yeah, that would be nomas lo que faltaba.
Your teammates will slap the back of your head and snap their fingers in your face. They’ll ask you if you’re good, but they’re not your friends. They’re scorers too and, right now, they’re better than you.
The coach will yell your last name and your chest will tighten. When you hear that name you won’t think of yourself anymore. Instead, you’ll wonder how it’ll sound after a first name that isn’t yours—a tiny face, little hands, but your last name. Damn. That pull in your chest—is that some stupid primal reaction humans have to their own DNA or what? What?
The ball is in your hands.
Panic will swallow you whole, your vision will blur at the edges. Your knees will buckle and your mind will scramble to what it knows best. Don’t fall—jump-shot position. But it’s involuntary. Even though you’re at half-court, you’ll shoot just to get the ball out of your shaky hands. You can’t help it; it’s a reflex. You let go, not even aiming right. It’s so dumb, but it almost sinks in, bouncing off the rim by just a hair. It won’t be enough to make you stay. The coach will take you out for a minute, but he won’t ask. He doesn’t really know you beyond number 11, shooting guard. He’ll just look at you, disappointed, and mumble something about his scorer not scoring. It’s practice, so it doesn’t matter, but you better not be like this during a game. (And don’t expect to be a starter anymore.)
When practice is over, go straight to the bathroom. Don’t feel alone if no one is there—that’s a good thing. Pick a stall and kneel before the toilet. Then just open your mouth. Just relax and open your mouth. But for some reason, you can’t even do that. The bile always comes out of your nose and burns your airways. And the problem isn’t that you can’t open your mouth—no, it’s deeper than that. The problem is you never learned how to throw up right.
Wipe your nose when you’re done. Get your breathing under control. Get it through your head that this is how you get out of a baby trap. You don’t need to hold your girlfriend’s hand and tell her everything will be okay or any lie like that, you don’t need to apologize, you don’t even have to break up. You can just leave.
Do you know how you make those crazy long-distance buzzer-beaters? Everyone finds them so impressive—you know why? Not because they see the hours of practice that it takes to make them—the routine of having your hands go through the shooting motions or the split- second calculations you’ve gotten used to making mid-game. What makes those shots impressive is that even with all that practice, you can miss them, but you still decide to shoot. This is like that. You can think about things all you want, but in the end, you either walk away or you don’t. Who even cares if she gets an abortion anymore? That’s her problem. She’s not going to college. So just leave.
But the thing is, when you try to open the door, you find the latch is broken and you’re trapped inside the stall. And no one ever taught you how to get out.

Elizabeth Monreal is a Mexican-American writer living in Las Vegas. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys reading, watching films, playing the violin, and arranging music. Her work has been published in Chariot Press, Somos En Escrito, The Word’s Faire, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety Press. Find more of her work at elizabethmonreal.com