I still wanted to tell our teacher about how the Indian people who’d worked on the ranch for us had explained to me that Shep, who’d always loved my … - Victor Villaseñor

e as you, but he couldn’t see me, because I was dark and Indian-looking and didn’t have blue eyes like him. Your mother and me, we are not going to forget you and your sisters like my father forgot me. I swear it!”

Suddenly, I don’t know how to explain it, the chess pieces seemed to come alive for me. It was like I could now see the chess pieces moving on the board on their own. I started beating everybody. I, the slowest of the slow, had now gone something like a hundred games without losing. I could do no wrong. It was magical how the pieces spoke to me, showing me where to move.

And here at my school, we were in a protected environment, and so, to be as tough as we were being taught to be wasn’t a virtue. It could also be just plain stupid. Like one cadet named Wellabussy. He was from La Jolla, and his family had a feeding pen for cattle in the Imperial Valley east of San Diego County. They were very wealthy, and he liked to tell the story about how he shot illegal Mexicans below their knees with his .22 rifle when they were returning home across the border after they’d worked all day on his dad’s ranch. When he told this story in English class, I was shocked. And after class when I asked him why he would do such a horrible thing, he smiled a sick-looking little grin. “Because it’s fun watching them scream,” he said, “and they’re illegal, so they can’t do shit about it.” He laughed, then said to me, “Grow up. We need to be tough and not give an inch or our whole country will go to hell, returning to the Indians who we already whipped.” I’ll never forget how he’d grinned at me as he said this, knowing well that I was Mexican and therefore part Indian.