It's Miguel with the glassy eye. The one who's dating my third cousin with the two kids and twelve toes. The one with the broken arm and broken car window. He's singing in church choir today.

We're in this big church with stained glass and gold painted ceilings. I feel out of place here.  Like maíz in a cabbage patch. The way I always do when I'm only one of only a handful of brown boys in the room.

"You know he's been in special Ed his whole life." Tia Juana whispers over me to my mother. "Couldn't read until he was twelve. To him, books just looked like somebody dropped the alphabet and didn't put is back right." 

She wanted to be a teacher, but couldn't find a job. Had a kid while going to college and couldn't go on to grad school so just settled for trying to tell everyone around her something they didn’t know. Whether it be about the bible or the chisme she heard at bingo, Tia Juana always has something to say.

The black slacks hanging over Miguel's legs look two sizes too big and his sport coat goes past his knees.

"Don't matter how dressed up he gets, you can tell he's from the streets."

He has a sway in his walk. Like a toddler or a drunk. I always see him all over town walking into bakeries or over highways. Just yesterday I saw him driving from the Thursday mass to the liquor store with his bright blue cast hanging out the windowless car door. He invited Sunny, the homeless man who hangs out on my corner back to his place to pop open a bottle of Cuervo and watch the game. Obviously, they started drinking as soon as they got in the car.

Guadalupe Vargas, a local high school football star gone police deputy approached the car, as Miguel tried rolling up the window he forgot was no longer there. Lupe, being one of two Mexicans on the police force, was assigned to patrol our neighborhood.

“You boys are keepin that bottle closed until you get home, right?” he said as more of a commandment than a question, addressing Miguel and Sunny as if he hadn't grown up with them just a few blocks away.

“Nah,” Miguel replied, “we're trying to get something going before kickoff. Wanna come watch the game with us?”

“Sir,” Lupe worked up his best authoritative voice, “I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle.”

“Lupe,” Miguel said with the courage from a lingering buzz from a breakfast of Tecate and eggs, “I’m gonna have to ask you to kiss my bony brown ass,” and sped off, knocking over my neighbor’s mailbox in his escape.

Lupe, more saddened at the lack of respect of his authority than angry, returned to his post, discouraged.

Now Miguel stands at the head of the church. The only Mexicano in the choir. A voice so big it takes up two parking spaces in your heart. The darkest angel I've ever seen.