Journal Entry: Roque

In the short story Uncle Rock, by Dagoberto Gilb, the main character, Erick, struggles with accepting the men his mother dates. One man in particular becomes a greater struggle for Erick to accept as his mother becomes more seriously involved with him. Eventually though, Erick is able to see that his mother is happy, and is tired of new guys coming around so he takes a step in the direction of accepting Roque and becoming okay with his mother’s relationship with Roque.

Erick had watched as many men walked in and out of his mother’s life. The story opens up with Erick describing a morning at his favorite restaurant. Then he mentions a man, and the tone of the story drastically changes from carefree and happy to heavy, bitter, and angry.  The story says Erick would “be sitting there, eating with his mother, not bothering anybody, and life was good, when a man changed it all. Most of the time it was just a man staring too much--- but then one would come over.”The story tells how Erick gets so used to his mother’s routine with men that he is able to predict what will happen, each step of the way, as it happens. The narrator describes Erick giving a play-by-play for the most common conversations his mother has with men.“He’d say something about her earings…then he’d wink at Erick. Such a fine-looking boy! How old is he, eight or nine?” Erick is so used to men hitting on his mother that he can guess how the evening will go. He even can tell the type of guy that his mother would go out with.

At one point,  Erick’s mother is dating an engineer. Erick is a little bit excited about this because he can brag to people that his father figure is smart and has a good job. After a while though, this relationship between Erick’s mother and the engineer ends and Erick’s mother finds a new guy.  At first, Erick is disappointed and a bit embarrassed that his mother is dating Roque because Erick was telling a boy named Albert about how his “father” was an engineer. Erick lets on that “the engineer wouldn’t have mattered if [he] hadn’t told Albert that he was his dad.” Roque sticks around for a while and Erick admits that Roque really makes his mother happy because he “loved her so much--- anybody could see his pride when he was with her.” This is the point where Erick begins to accept Roque.

The final resolution of the story is after Roque had taken Erick and his mother to a baseball game. Erick caught the game ball and as he was leaving the stadium, he got the ball signed by all the players. This was a great moment for Erick until one of the players handed Erick a note for his mother that said “I’d like to get to know you. You are muy linda. Very beautiful and sexy.”Instead of handing this note to his mother, Erick drops it, or tosses it on the ground as he is walking back to his mom and Roque. When he gets to them, he says in a full voice, “Look. They all signed the ball.” This was a huge moment for Erick. Erick was able to let go of the fact that a player from his favorite baseball team wanted to “get to know” his mother better, and instead chose to move forward and communicate with his mother and Roque, even if just saying “Look. They all signed the ball.”