An American Son: A Memoir by Marco Rubio Page A

sure we always had everything we needed. And when they could afford to give us more, they did. When Veronica and I were old enough to be at home alone or with only my grandfather to supervise us, my mother started working again. She got a job as a maid on the casino floor of the Imperial Palace Hotel. My father was doing well in his bartending job at Sam’s Town. They made a good living between their two salaries and my dad’s tips. It was not enough to support a lavish lifestyle, of course, but enough to afford a few extras. When I asked my parents to let Veronica and me attend the local Catholic school instead of the public junior high school, they agreed. The tuition at St. Christopher Catholic School was a stretch for them financially, but, as always, they wanted us to be happy.
    Yet, from the start, I was anything but happy there. We had to wear uniforms, which I didn’t like. The schoolwork was much more demanding, which I really didn’t like. My biggest problem with the school, though, was its location directly across the street from J. D. Smith, the junior high I would have attended, and where every day I watched my friends from sixth grade and football come and go.
    After one week at St. Christopher, I demanded my parents take me out of the school and enroll me at J. D. Smith. I made up all kinds of phony excuses. I told my parents the teachers were mean and the other kids didn’t like us. Our priest told them to ignore me. My whims shouldn’t override their judgment. I was a child and needed to obey them. But I made life unbearable in our house, and within a week, my parents had relented. I cringe today when I remember how selfishly I behaved.
    I could be an insufferably demanding kid at times. I’m ashamed of it now, and I regret my parents so often gave in to me. I know they did it out of love, and it did make me happy in the moment, which they so badly wanted me to be. But they weren’t doing me a favor in the long run. I can still be selfish with my time and attention, even though I have children. But Jeanette won’t indulge my bad behavior as my parents had. She lets me know instantly when I am shirking my most important responsibility. I think I might have become a difficult person to like had I married someone else.
    My football season that year was brief. The Cavaliers and the Sooners had decided to merge that summer, and became a Pop Warner dream team: a collection of the most talented players from two of the best teams in the area. I badly wanted to make the team, and the head coach of the new team was Coach Atkins, my former coach. I worried for weeks he wouldn’t select me because I had left the Sooners when he hadn’t let me play quarterback. So I was thrilled when he called in mid-July to tell me I had made the team.
    The team had a great year. Me, not so much. After playing the best game I had ever played in Pop Warner, I broke my leg the next week in practice. I missed the rest of the season, including our victory in the city championship game.
    We planned to spend the last two weeks of 1983 in Miami, and Barbara bought us tickets to the Dolphins’ last regular-season game against the New York Jets. I was overjoyed to see the Dolphins break open a close game to defeat the Jets and finish the regular season with a 12 4 record. I was sure they would make the Super Bowl. My father bought me one of those foam “We’re Number 1” hands at the game. I still have it.
    We celebrated a traditional Cuban
Nochebuena
that Christmas Eve with Barbara and Orlando at their new house in a rural part of Dade County. Their house was small, but had an acre of land. Orlando was from a
guajiro
family, a Cuban term for country folk. He and his family slaughtered a pig, and on the morning of Christmas Eve they set it over a pit filled with charcoal and covered with palm fronds, where it would slowly roast for the entire day. The pig was carved and served at nine o’clock that night, along with black beans and