CIRCO

by Tara Ellis

It didn’t take the Medina family long to realize that their services were no longer operating. Their Internet and cable dropped dead like an old horse.

  Without these everyday distractions that made it possible to live among one another and not with one another, they started to realize how much they couldn’t get along.

  “This sucks!!!” Julio shouted. He laid, practically melting into the living room furniture, expressing his vexation. “This Sucks!!”

  Jorge sat idle in the kitchen, seemingly in pain. He was going through withdrawals of his addiction, the internet.

  “Give it up already,” Jorge demanded.

  Big brother walks to the fridge. “I can’t help it. Can’t Skype, can’t see what my girlfriends are doing on Facebook, it feels like I’m missing out on everything.” Julio had an abundance of friends that happen to be all girls. He found girls more relatable than boys.

  “I’m missing out on stuff too,” said Jorge.

  “Yeah, but I’m missing out on stuff with people I know in real life, not just creeps on the internet.” Jorge saw his point, so he didn’t retort.

  Daddy shouts from another room “Quite it down Brenda.”

  “That’s your grown son Julio,” responded Jorge. Julio talked feminine. He was an eighteen year old male, but he could make his two younger sisters sound butch.

  “Did someone scream for me?” The actual Brenda then walked in. She dropped her pudgy little body on a table seat and let out a caustic sigh. Brenda sat there and mocked being troubled in her childlike way of relating to her brothers. Jorge knew she wanted some attention but he didn’t care to amuse her, since he was actually languid. She let out an attention attracting sigh. Jorge remained unmoved. So she goes for another, and still nothing. She asked an array of insipid questions and all his replies contained two or less syllables. She understood Jorge was not in the mood so she found somebody else to bother.

  “Julio, I’m bored.”

  “How are you bored? You have enough books and DVDs of the same vampire love drivel to last for the rest of your life.”

  “I watched all the DVDs and read all the books.”

  “How?” He asked, “You have a stack of books taller than you.”

  She told him that she was a small girl and Julio retorted “Only in height!” Julio laughed while Jorge tried to smother his chuckle. Brenda got off the chair and left the kitchen. As she turned away, Julio saw those hazel brown eyes gloss over in their glasses. He saw those plump little lips of hers quiver. He hit her in the place where she was most sensitive, her weight.

  “One day she will grow up and look back on how mean I was to her,” he thought. He started to become annoyed with the sudden weight on his head; thinking about the outcomes of his words and actions towards his family. “It is way too early in the day to have guilt,” he thought.

  He found his sister tucked away into her room. “Come on, we’re about to have some fun.”

  She popped off her bed. “You mean it?”

  He went down the hall telling her to hurry up before he changed his mind. They walked out the apartment into the main hallway and approached the elevator.

  He intended to take her to the salon so they both could get facials, pedicures and manicures, but an unexpected occurrence took place. He pressed the floor button and the whole car gave a violent jerk.

  “We’re going to need Ms. Fix it aren’t we,” she asked.

  “Well that is obvious,” he said.

  Moments later they got Vanessa to resolve the problem. She inquired what happened and they explained thus so.

  “Show me what you did.” He obliged and the car did not fail to fail.

  “Could be the machine bearings again, or maybe the hydraulic pumps,” she thought.

  “Okay I’m going up.” From the top she removes a section of the car and slides herself in. As she peered upwards, the light from her hardhat illuminated the elevator shaft and it seemed immeasurable; stretching on and on.

  She recognized the problem. She asked Julio to hoist up a socket wrench. He glanced in the tool bag and could not properly distinguish her variety of “whatchamacallit’s”. Brenda pointed to the proper tool and thus he hoisted it.

  A moment had passed since Vanessa started tinkering away. From above, Brenda and Julio heard a mixture of banging and clanging. Displaying the impatience he is known for, Julio yelled “how much longer are you going to take?”

  “I almost have it where I want it,” she said. The job was finished in no time. She was eager to be free from the cramped spacing, relieving her back from being hunched over. She comes down with grease stains all over her hands, face and shirt. Julio thought how distasteful she looked, thinking she was fashionably retarded in her Hardhat and safety glasses. As they went off, he saw a youthful version of Mommy with softer more delicate features. “It’s a shame,” he thought.

  Mommy kept to be fashion forward in public; decked from head to toe in everything designer. And she kept her little-ones in the latest styles. As Vanessa saw it; clothes with goofy names. The goofier the name, the more mommy will desire It. She was more comfortable as a grease monkey.

  Mommy told countless times to Vanessa “look your very best with me, or l won’t be seen with you.” Only on rare occurrences did anyone ever see Vanessa with Mommy. Looking homely was Vanessa’s own little way of rebelling from the vanity her mother edged on.

  You may question why this is a deal in the family. It is because Mommy’s philosophy is what you wear is what makes you. Meaning what you wear is how people will perceive you. But Vanessa believed what she knew and what she could do defined her. And every time Mommy declared that it’s a damn shame she has her good looks, Vanessa thinks, yes, except I have more intelligence.

  Julio asked Vanessa to come away with them; stating that they should all have a girl’s day out. But of course knowing Vanessa the way he did, he was forced to give into a little falsehood. And soon they left their home in the clock tower.

  Julio always felt any place was more amiable than his house. He pulled away from the driveway and vexed at the eyesore in his rearview mirror. “So horrendous,” he muttered. “Hey, that’s our home,” Vanessa replied.

  They both were right. Truth is; passing through Detroit; the clock tower is the ugliest thing you will come across. It is absolutely positively disagreeable in appearance. And it disheartens the Medina children to be known as the clock tower family.

  “Yeah and it was a total obstacle in my social life,” Julio said. “I don’t let people know I live there anymore. After a while the funny looks get to be a bit much.”

  “I wouldn’t even let that bother me,” Vanessa said. “Most of these kids out here are too stuck up any way.”

  “You need to shed that attitude. I think that’s why I don’t see you with friends.”

  “My problem is that I never liked assholes, for some reason they always bugged me. These people out here; and you can just see it in their faces. They don’t aspire to be anything.”

  “Now you sound like an asshole.”

  “How so? You would know. All your friends are trust fund babies.”

  Julio scuffed, shook his head. “It doesn’t make since for me to look down on anybody for any reason.”

  Then it became apparent to Julio why his sister had no friends. He thought it wasn’t for the reason she just gave, so he said to her “You realize you look down on those who look down on other people. Kinda hypocritical. It would make more since if you led by example, teach others. Or maybe you just like excuses for not coming out of your shell.”

  He always knew his sister was a little off growing up, now it is becoming apparent how much so.

  “So if you don’t like trust fund babies or assholes who do you hang out with,” Julio asked.

  �
��With real people… Okay that sounded stupid.”

  “It did…”

  “But really, I hang out everywhere, where I go I meet all different types of people.” They all went quiet for a moment, because it felt like a lie. Julio wanted tranquility so he let it go. Even Vanessa didn’t buy the lie that came out her own mouth.

  Mommy shuffled her bra around in the mirror until her dirty pillows (as she called them) were in order. She turned to Daddy as he walked in with the mail. “Service for the whole area is shut down,” he said.

  “What’s going on,” Mommy asked.

  “Says here, Charter has been experiencing major technical difficulties and that services should be back up around 48 to 72 hours.”

  “I told you not to go with Charter we should have went with Comcast.”

  “Enough with the I-told-you-so’s. Since everyone is sitting around bored I figured we could visit Belle Isle. Their having a South-American arts festival.”

  The daylight coming through the window radiated her skin, it almost appeared to Daddy that Mommy was glowing. She tilts her head to the side letting her ponytail fall in her cleavage. Gorgeous, a former model; in her heyday a fashion magazine dubbed her ‘The best damn thing period’. Now mid forties and her face slightly weathered, it was near impossible to book a decent ad campaign for any perfume or clothing brand. Despite looking older she kept the shape even after five kids; that fact made Daddy worship her.

  “Why do you want to go there?”

  “Because we are Hispanic,” he says with cocked eyebrows.

  “Yeah, but we’re too white washed. None of us speaks Spanish. We are just brown people at this point. Your parents aren’t even from Mexico they’re from California.”

  “That’s still Mexico.”

  She doesn’t argue. Daddy laid on the bed with eyes toward the ceiling and asked “are we okay?” She knew exactly what he meant; she tried to find the words that would sound good to him.

  “We’re functioning.” After those words left her mouth, she realized how cold of an answer that really was; it sounded better in her head. “We don’t hate each other. We are not an unloving family,” she said. He turned his head to her, but didn’t say anything. “Okay I have my complaints.”

  “With me?”

  “No, not with you, I would have told you by now.”

  “The kids?.....Vanessa.” He spoke under his breath, like the name was afraid to poke out from his mouth. He was nervous where the conversation was headed. And, so was she.

 

  The Blow up