El Negro felt that his mother’s grip on his arm was unusually strong, almost violent.
She pulled him out to the side entrance, pierced his arm with her little fingers and sprang a huge surprise on him saying this:
“You can do it. You don’t have the same father.”
El Negro’s mind kept spinning for a while; he went to the bathroom and slapped himself twice, since the color had left his face. His heart was like a racing little drum.
Each one of his friends called his sister la Negra, not because of her skin color: they named her after him. She was only a couple of years older than him and all his friends were seriously in love with her, but she chose José Alfredo, his best friend.
El Negro married first, when la Pato was pregnant. Soon enough they had their second one, a boy. The joke was that both of his children looked more like Jose Alfredo. But when la Negra and José Alfredo married, they couldn’t get pregnant. The mother spoke with her daughter, told la Negra to be patient, but still the couple was struggling for a few years before José Alfredo was able to accept that he would never have enough spermatozoa. He was completely sterile.
That day, after so many beers, finally José Alfredo opened his heart or his mind or whatever, made a pompous acknowledgment of his love for his brother in law, and asked el Negro to donate his sperm. Of course, el Negro’s first reaction was of mixed feelings. It felt somewhat awkward, yet proper. But el Negro had this weird image of a little pig with an unruly, boisterous tail and the first thing he said was:
“Genetics. No. We are going to duplicate the possibility of inherited illness.”
The second thought was about his father, dying so young. El Negro’s father loved to joke about the darkness of his son, saying el Negro inherited the genes of an ancestor that was a pirate, and got from him the color and the wildness.
Neither la Pato nor la Negra moved their bended heads when he answered no, as if they were expecting it. Only the mother looked at him with a very intense gaze and José Alfredo got a burst of tears in his eyes. El Negro felt the need to move his legs and went to the side of the house. His mother followed him soon after.
That is what happened earlier. El Negro checked again in the mirror: he looked calmer.
When he felt back in control, he went back to the patio. His mother made an imperceptible gesture towards him, meaning everything was all right. He approached them, and it was obvious that the celebration had stopped a while ago. So, he grabbed another beer by its neck, and cheering himself, said with strong emotions:
“Screw the genetics! We are going to have that baby! But please, please, bro: don’t name him José Alfredo!”
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