The Other Half of Happy

by Rebecca Balcarcel

  A light-skinned boy next to me makes a tss sound and hisses “Mexicans” under his breath, as if these neatly dressed kids are space junk.

  My ears burn. They have the same stiff, black hair as my cousin Raúl. I don’t think they heard. I hope they didn’t. Then the mean boy looks right at me and says, “Don’t belong here,” and I think he means I don’t belong here—with my amber skin, my dark eyes.

  But no. He thinks I’m on his side. I speak with no accent; he hasn’t met my Guatemalan dad; he doesn’t know my name. He looks at the brothers and spits on the ground.

  And what do I do? Nothing. I do nothing, I say nothing.

  An us-them gravity pulls the group together. I’m in.

  For a second, I’m relieved. I’m a local; they’re not. I’m American; they’re—well, what is American? Maybe they are. Just because they speak Spanish doesn’t mean they’re not American. I think of my Carrillo cousins and what they would look like standing here.

  A crinkly feeling crawls up my arms. I can’t meet anyone’s eyes. I look at the sidewalk and see one girl’s shoe stepping on top of her other one. Maybe she feels it, too. I want to do something, but I can’t think what. Should I say something? No words come to mind.

  We hear the bus’s engine strain up the hill, and this makes it final. The new boys remain a distant moon, our group a home planet. A knot tightens in my stomach. I’m not the one who said “Mexicans” like an insult,I tell myself. I didn’t do anything wrong. I couldn’t have done any better.

  We board the bus, and I take the seat with the wheel hump, trying not to notice where the brothers sit.

  GRANDMA TEXTS AT LAST.

  School out? One good thing about cancer: it makes small stuff smaller and big stuff bigger. You’re some big stuff, Quijana. I love the hiking photo and you, too, sweet one. Any adventures today?

  My head clears, and the tingliest part of the day comes back.

  I ate lunch with Jayden. I’m going to write a song!

  That’s my girl!

  But I’m worried about you.

  The doctors have a long list of plans for me. Everything’s okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.

  I ponder that and send three pink daisies.

  At home, I shrug off my backpack and find a cheese stick in the fridge. I check the clock. An hour before Dad and Memito come home. I’m in the clear.

  I lift Dad’s guitar from its hook on the living room wall. My hands are smaller than his, but I manage to press the right strings for a G chord. The strings leave creases on my finger pads, but as I practice the chord, it sounds clearer and bigger, like a full choir in my hands. I strum down, down-up, down, down, the pattern I learned on the video. Notes splash into the air.

  I check YouTube for the next two fingerings. C is hard, and my third finger can barely reach its string. Repetition helps, but I move on to D, which turns out to be the easiest. I start a simple song. At each chord change, I stop and position my fingers. Geez, it takes forever to sing one verse. Dad makes it look so effortless.

  I practice moving my hands from one chord to the next, cycling through G, C, D. G, C, D. An image of Jayden at the tree today pops into my head, and a melody forms around a sentence. The more I know you, the more I want to know you more. My song’s first line!

  A car door slams.

  I silence the strings with the flat of my hand and dash to the hook on the wall. The guitar’s neck slides in just as the front door opens. I sprint to the couch and sit, my heart pounding. “Hey, Dad.” I wave. He walks in, Memito close behind.

  “Hola, m’ija. So glad to be home.”

  He doesn’t notice my fast breathing. Or ask why I’m randomly sitting on the couch with nothing in my hands. Whew.

  I stand up, and Memito runs to me for a spin-around, then grabs his dump truck and starts running it in a figure-eight around the couch and the coffee table.

  “What’s that?” I ask. Dad’s unwrapping a rectangular bristly thing. It looks like a brush for scrubbing potatoes.

  “A sensory integration brush. Memito’s teacher gave it to us. She says brushing his skin might help him be less sensitive.”

  “Brushing his skin?”

  “We’ll take it out for a whirl.”

  “You mean ‘give it a whirl’?”

  “Yes, m’ija,” he says, rolling his eyes and rubbing my head.

  I smooth my hair. “Is he going to get his hearing checked, too?”

  “Soon.”

  Memito is still running his dump truck in the figure eight. I get busy lifting down dinner plates.

  “Set a plate for your mother, too,” Dad says. “Her evening class got canceled. Let’s use the dining table.”

  The dining table! Eating together at the dining table makes this feel like Thanksgiving in October. I’m so excited that I fold paper napkins into special standing fans. Dad lights two candles that flicker at first from the dust on their wicks, but find a steady shine just as we hear the front door open.

  “Well, isn’t this beautiful!” Mom says. We say a prayer, and a deep peace settles over the room. Even Memito stays quiet.

  Nights like this make Dad thoughtful, and sure enough, he starts a story after we eat. “Don Quixote, man of La Mancha.”

  Again we hear about the crazy knight on his creaky horse on the sun-scorched plains of Spain. This time it’s a part of the story where he’s rescuing a beaten servant, a boy lashed for bad sheep-herding. I’ve heard the windmill fight scene over and over, but this part is new.

  Don Quixote hears the shepherd boy crying and stops his horse. The boy’s master is raising a leather strap in the air. “You, there! Stop!” Quixote says. The man stops, and Quixote lectures him on honor and morals.

  “Of course you’re right, Don Quixote.” The man bows and promises to treat the boy well. But it’s a lie. The man picks up his leather strap after Quixote rides away.

  “You see how important it is to keep people from abusing their power,” Dad finishes.

  All my life I’ve agreed with him, but this story makes me frown. “That’s not a good story,” I say.

  Memito has been chugging his sippy cup, but now he stares at me.

  “The boy wasn’t rescued!” I’m genuinely mad. “Quixote just thinks he saved the day because he leaves before seeing that he didn’t even do anything. Why would that convince anyone not to abuse their power? The bad guy won!”

  Every word I think of saying has a spike in it. And the more my father tilts his head to the ceiling and looks into the distance, the more I want to shake him. If Quixote can’t rescue anyone, how can he call himself a knight? He’s a fake.

  “It takes time to understand the stories,” Dad says. “In Guatemala, you’ll meet an uncle who reads Don Quixote every year.”

  No, I won’t. “Quixote never does any good,” I counter. Not in any episode I’ve heard.

  My father considers this. He isn’t angry, but I wish he were. “It’s true,” he says. “It doesn’t matter, though.”

  I raise my voice. “It does matter.” The room goes quiet. I’ve said enough. I can tell because my mother puts her fork down. But I can’t back down. “It matters! Ask the boy. It matters to him!” Suddenly I want to scream at them, to fling black bolts of lightning. I try to keep my thoughts from veering to the boys at the bus stop and their open faces. What good is being a knight if you can’t change the world, make things actually better? Why is this day falling apart? “You named me after a failure!” The last word comes out cracked. I cover my face with my hands.

  I can feel my parents looking at each other and the cheery candlelight mocking me. I’ve ruined our one family dinner.

  Mom turns to Memito. “Go wash your hands, m’ijo,” she says as she lifts him down from his booster seat. He scurries down the hallway, and she faces me, takes a deep breath, and then smiles a somehow serious smile. “Quijana, your name comes from Alonso Quixana. He’s the man who became Don Quixote.”

  I al
ready know this and say nothing.

  “The man who took up his lance to make things right.” My father’s voice is too gentle.

  I don’t look at him. “He screwed up,” I say to my plate. “He screws up everything.” My cheeks feel hot, and I know I am talking about myself. I picture Jayden realizing that I’m not smart, not interesting, not worth asking to prom, now or ever.

  “Out of the fabric of failure, Quixote sews success,” Dad says. “What does that mean?”

  “He makes the effort. For its own sake. His heart is true no matter what.”

  “Think of it this way,” Mom says. “The world is always against him, but he tries against all odds.”

  They must think that I am more loca than the knight, that I am just what schoolkids teased me about back in elementary—too serious. I want to make a real difference, not an imaginary one that only I believe in.

  Dad slides his hand toward me across the table. “You don’t have to be perfect, Quijana. You are named for an ordinary man. A man who tried his best.”

  Mom leans in. “Failing is part of life, more common than not. But the try is what matters, Qui.”

  “That’s stupid.” I want to kick the table leg. Why can’t Quixote win once in a while? I want to do more than fight losing battles. I try to stay mad, but the feeling passes when I look at my father’s face, still warm after my coldness. Still soft after my hardness.

  “Sometimes the lost causes are the noblest,” he says, his voice like warm milk in a mug.

  I’m not sure this is so, but a weariness moves through me. I just want to be done with this day.

  “Someday, Quijana, you’ll read Don Quixote and understand. Or, ah! We could read it together. An English translation, of course. One page every night!”

  How did we get here? My parents haven’t read me bedtime stories for years. Why is he always trying to establish a Spanish colony in my brain? “Dad,” I say to the table. “That’s the last book I want to read.”

  I feel him looking at me, but I keep my head down. He inhales as if to say something. But then he pushes his chair back and leaves the table in silence. Mom leaves, too, and I hear her long exhale.

  And then I do kick the table leg.

  I KNOW IT’S CHILDISH, but I stomp to the kitchen and rinse my plate without being careful. I like its clatter in the sink. I’m angry at my father and angry at Don Quixote. Who wants to be famous for losing?

  Rubbing my plate hard with a sponge, I play a familiar game: thinking of names I would rather have. Emily. Hailey. Madison. Names that people know how to pronounce. Names with only one dot. Quijana has two, like little eyes that watch for my mistakes.

  I lie on my bed and try listening to music. It usually unbuttons a bad mood, but not this time. The manatee poster smiles at me from the ceiling, but I can’t even look at her. Instead, I open my sock drawer and pull out the envelope from the garage sale. I count out ones, fives, and tens, putting them in three piles. $52. Bus fare is $177. How can I earn more? Fast.

  I hear a knock. Ugh. Why can’t Dad let me stay mad?

  “Can I come in?” he says.

  I sweep the money back into the drawer and bounce onto my bed. “Yeah.” I pull out my earbuds.

  He looks around the room as if he hasn’t seen it before. His gaze moves from my stuffed manatee to my origami swan to the bookshelf. From the doorway he says, “School. It’s going well?”

  I’m about to be annoyed that every conversation seems to start with this question when he sighs and rubs his face. He lowers his head, and I suddenly see my dad as if from far away. He looks like a nice man. A nice man who has something to say.

  “School’s fine, Dad.” As usual, I don’t mention the not-fines.

  He nods. “Of course it is. Education, so important. You always do well in school, yes?”

  “You know I do, Dad.” What is he after?

  “Yes, because you are lista, Quijana. Since you were little, you always asked questions. Always your eyes stay open.” He sits on the edge of the bed and it’s hard to stay annoyed, hearing his soft voice. Still, I can’t help thinking he doesn’t know me. Not the real me.

  “I love you very much,” he says, looking into my eyes. “No matter what.” He means it. I know this, but I’m also thinking it doesn’t count. Of course he loves me, but can anyone else? Sometimes it feels like I’m nothing but a pile of flaws. A better Quijana would love the Guatemalan stuff on our walls, get A’s in Spanish, and stand up for the bus-stop boys. Grandma said to stay true to myself. Is my real self a failed Latina?

  “Did I ever tell you about Castel?”

  More than once, I say to myself. “One of your grandmother’s horses.”

  “Yes. My favorite one. He was gray like castle stone, with a soft black nose. Castel was a better friend to me than any village child. He and I spent hours together, exploring the land.” My father’s face turns even sadder now.

  Usually his Castel stories light him up. Maybe I haven’t heard this one.

  “One day his breathing was coming hard. Something was wrong. He tried to put his nose in my hand, but he could hardly lift his head. A neighbor told me that a certain fruit might save him, and another said an herb might help. I hiked many kilometers to find the tree that made the fruit. Then I traded five eggs from my own chickens for the herb. I mashed these together and brought them to Castel. By now he was very sick. I fed him my medicine, but it didn’t help. A hired man took away his suffering with a shotgun.”

  My father’s eyes meet mine, and something softens inside me.

  “You see, we do not win every time. But in trying, we show our love. We show the goodness of our hearts.”

  I see the goodness of his heart. I’m not sure about mine. I’m not as good as he thinks. After all, I’m planning to hop a bus in the middle of the night without telling him.

  I try to figure out why he’s telling me this story right now. Maybe he means that trying really is the important thing, even a stuttering trying like mine. Trying to be me, trying to live up to my name—I’m not very good at either one.

  He touches the side of my face with two fingers. “Mi Quijanita . . .”

  My nickname wakes up a memory: Dad lifting me up to see a blooming branch of redbud. His -ita echoes in my ears. It’s a drop of honey in the air, a swirl of cinnamon stirred into my name. I can’t help but forgive him for pushing Quixote into my life.

  Even so, I wish Quixote could accomplish something and not be so weird.

  Dad kisses my forehead and hugs my head to his chest, but I still feel alone.

  When my computer dings, I immediately perk up. I click open the Skype window, and it’s Grandma with her wavy white hair and bright eyes.

  “Grandma!”

  “Hola, Elizabeth,” says Dad. “You and Quijana have fun.”

  “Bye, Antonio.” She waves as Dad leaves the room. “How’s my girl?”

  “Does anything hurt, Grandma? Do you feel any better?”

  “I hope to after surgery, sweetie. It’s scheduled for next week,” she says. “They’ll try to take out all the cancer, and we’ll go from there.”

  My heart lifts. Once the doctors remove all the cancer, everything will be back to how it was. Spring breaks and Thanksgivings and Christmases and summer visits to watch the hatching sea turtles.

  “Oh, Grandma, that’ll be great.”

  “It could be. Nothing is certain in this world, except that you are my favorite granddaughter!”

  “I’m your only granddaughter,” I say with a grin.

  “Exactly.” She winks. “Tell me, how’s the guitar going? Are you writing that song you mentioned?”

  “Yeah, I started it. I only have two lines . . .”

  “I think the first two lines are probably the hardest ones.”

  I think about that.

  “When I took biology, we started by studying unicellular organisms. Those are organisms made up of only one cell, like algae and bacteria. But all life—beetles
and trees and blue whales—it all grows from that one idea. From a tiny building block. So the first two lines are very important.”

  Grandma makes everything seem possible. But I wonder if she’s more worried than she seems. “Aren’t you scared, Grandma?”

  “About the surgery? No, I’ve had an operation before—gallbladder.”

  “About the cancer.”

  She swallows. “I am afraid.” She takes a deep breath and looks up, as if searching for words. “But not for myself. Fear comes from resisting what life brings you, from wanting your own way. I’ve seen a lot of death, Quijana. As a biologist, I know, in a deep way, that my body is mortal. What I worry about are my daughters. And especially, you.”

  “But we’re not sick.”

  “No, of course. But you’ll have to say goodbye to me eventually, maybe very soon. And goodbyes are hard.”

  I try to process each part of what she’s said. “So you’re not afraid to die?”

  “I’m not. It’s natural.”

  “But you’re afraid for me.”

  “Yes and no. You’ll flourish in your life, I’m sure of that. But you’ll grieve, too. And not just for me. All your life, you’ll be letting go of things. The great secret is to relish the moments as they happen, but let endings happen, too.”

  “I don’t know.” I’m not feeling cheered up the way she probably wants me to. “That sounds hard.”

  “Yes, but listen. I have friends who had cancer years ago and came through it just fine. That could very well be me. Surgery first. Then I’ll have some decisions to make. I don’t want to be kept alive with, you know, machines and things. I want to live for real, or not at all.”

  I want her to live, too. Forever. Which is childish, I know. But Grandma sounds strong, like she always does, and surgery will keep the cancer from getting worse. If her friends survived cancer, she can, too. She can get well.

  ALL WEEK, JAYDEN AND I TEXT about the play—which characters he likes, how the set might look, and whether the cast will really wear clothes that look like they’re from 1800.