I threw my sports bag in the back of my running partner’s new van and then climbed in the passenger seat, ready for a weekend away to run a couple of footraces, the first that afternoon and the second the following morning. I was in a good mood. And it would have lasted beyond the first two minutes if I hadn’t plucked a hair off my fleece jacket and let it fall from my fingers. I live with two cats and two dogs, and a hair on my jacket is like a speck of mortar on the sleeve of a brick mason, or a smudge of chocolate on a child’s mouth. It would be weird not to have a hair or two. It would mean my pets and I never interacted. My running partner, however, is not an animal lover. He is not the person to smile or shake his head, amused, at a cat hair. Especially as it settles onto the immaculate upholstery of his sleek new van. So he told me off.
That was the first surprise. The second was when he ignored a comment I made about the weather. The third was when he ordered me to call his daughter on my cell phone. He gave that order after I casually mentioned that I’d spoken to her 15 minutes earlier, before he’d picked me up, when she’d called, asking if we’d left yet. (My partner has no cell phone, so I am often the go-between.) What had she wanted? he asked. She, along with her six-year-old daughter, had seen the van go by and called to wish us a good trip, I reported as my partner maneuvered through town and onto the highway. I checked my phone. Oh, I said, another call from her, a minute ago. That was when rather than ask me to call her back, please, he commanded me to.
It turned out that the granddaughter wanted to say goodbye to her grandfather, and while I held my cell phone aloft, the speaker function activated, my partner told his daughter we had just merged onto the highway, and what did she want him to do? She told him to take the next exit to circle back around and say goodbye. And so he did. He muttered darkly about the delay in our departure. I was glad it wasn’t my fault. We rode in silence.
Ten minutes later, we were saying goodbye to my friend’s daughter and granddaughter at the designated corner, where we double parked long enough to fulfill the socially approved Spanish obligation of coddling a child. Then we were off again.
“See,” I said, once we were back on the road, “that wasn’t so bad.” My partner had been glowering since the cat hair had touched his pristine vehicle, his mood easing only during the five minutes spent with his family. For them, he had adopted a cheery demeanor when bidding his little granddaughter goodbye and giving her a kiss, before slipping back into his ill humor when we were alone again. He didn’t answer me. So I prodded. “Would you have gone back for me? If I’d forgotten something or had wanted to say goodbye to someone?”
“No,” he answered. I was an adult and should not forget things.
I pointed out that his daughter was an adult and yet had neglected to tell me what she wanted when she’d first called. The kiss could have been dispatched before we’d left town.
Whose fault was that? he asked.
Was he blaming me?
Yes, because hadn’t his daughter talked to me first, and hadn’t she asked where he was?
And, I answered hotly, I had told her that I was meeting him in 10 minutes, and nothing had been said about a kiss or about calling to talk before we set off. In fact, his daughter had wished us a good trip. That meant goodbye.
He blamed me anyway.
This was most unfair. Terribly unfair. I told him so, and more: I said I get blamed for everything. Everything that is someone else’s fault gets blamed on me. He does it, my kids do it, everyone! So I asserted, angrily. Everyone blames me.
Blame is echar la culpa.
I had every right to protest. Even to be angry. Anger, though—does it ever do any good? Rather than continue the argument by pushing back against my pushback, my partner broke into song. “Échame a mí la culpa,” he sang, “De lo que pase / Cúbrete tú la espalda / Con mi dolor.”
I knew the song, written in 1957 by the Mexican songwriter José Ángel Espinoza, covered in the late ’50s by a number of artists, and then brought back in 1973 by Albert Hammond, a prolific songwriter in his own right. It’s a love song, but the message works as well for friends, or siblings, or a parent and child. The refrain translates as “Blame me / For whatever happens / Cover your back / With my pain.” It’s a song about taking the blame rather than insisting on justice. About being generous instead of vindicated. With just that reminder of a different attitude, I relaxed, decided to get over my pique, and have a good time. With or without my friend’s help. What exactly, though, I wondered, had he meant by breaking into song? Did he think he was admitting blame, or counseling me to take it? Was he with this hint blaming me for not taking the blame? Or was he blaming me for blaming him instead of inviting him to blame me? Who was in the right, here? I didn’t ask.
