Notwithstanding, the actions that were taken against me were vindictive in nature and did not take into account the eleven plus years I have spent as a valuable member of the Jenison team. My performance throughout my time at the company has been consistently excellent, with no prior history of complaint, and as many of my peers and former supervisors can attest to, I was wrongfully dismissed. Not only have I suffered financially as a result, I have also suffered a loss of dignity due to the nature in which the termination was handled. I thus believe that I am entitled to damages and am requesting that I am reinstated into my position at Jenison Consulting LLC.
Maria’s voice hastened as she reached the end of the letter, and Miguel saw how, once she was done, she dragged her hand over the flashing orange box. She hovered over it, sighed, and then returned to the keyboard.
“What else?” She tapped her fingernails, making a jittery noise against the plastic, like the feet of running mice.
Miguel sat with his palm across his mouth. There had been a mild lisp in the way she said “suffered.” The letter sounded entirely like her. He tried to submerge the thought somewhere deep in his mind. He woke his wife up to go to church every week, but sometimes he still couldn’t chase away the thought that faith is what you have when you have no other choice.
“Nothing.” He pushed the stool back and stood. “Print it.”
At her public school, Maria had been one of the only girls in her grade who didn’t speak Spanish perfectly. She was embarrassed by the awkward way that she fumbled with the burring words. Her parents both spoke Spanish, but they spoke English, too, and neither of them had strategized around how to raise perfectly bilingual children. Her Ecuadorian mother spoke Spanish fluently, but her Puerto Rican father spoke a raggedy, macheteado form of Spanish that Maria found baffling, considering that her father’s parents hated speaking in English. She had asked her mother once how it could be that his Spanish could be so poor when it was all his mother spoke at home. “Mija, please,” Maria’s mother had said. “You think when your father was young he spent time at home?”
So Maria didn’t know how to switch from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English with the smart dexterity that the other girls in her school did, welding the melted Romantic with the molten Germanic in the span of a few hot breaths. She had grown up being one Maria out of many—Maria Torres, Maria Hernandez, and Maria Daza all having been classmates of hers during one particularly bad year in middle school—and for a moment that was over so quickly that she hardly remembered it happening, she had begun to litter her sentences with “diques” and “peros” and “como asis” like the other girls in her classes did. Still, she sensed a difference between them. At Maria Torres’s house, she only responded to her friend’s mother in English even though all of the questions were delivered in Spanish. She had let her friend explain away the puzzled look on Mrs. Torres’s face. “Entiendo pero no hablo,” she had offered, and Maria silently conceded to Mrs. Torres’s disappointed, if not censorious, frown.
Maria expected she would have been subjected to more encounters like these if she hadn’t been accepted to Bell Seminary. At Bell, Maria never heard Spanish songs blaring from phones in the hallway. She didn’t need to keep up on Spanish telenovelas to have after-school conversations. At Bell, she could finally converse with her schoolmates’ parents without feeling ashamed at the fact that she hated speaking Spanish, was self-conscious about her dopey accent. Nowhere in their downcast eyes did she see the thoughts about how raro it was, how much of a pity, how great a pesar, that a girl named Maria only answered in English. And what a relief it was, what a mollifying effect it had on her to find that she no longer needed to explain away her Spanish name. The parents of the girls at Bell Seminary shook hands with Maria, they invited her to family brunches, they asked if she’d ever tried rhubarb before. They never asked Maria to invite her mother over for un cafecito or said that they wanted to conocer a tu mamá.
When Diana Benitez first started a club for students of color during Friday noon elective, Maria remembered those awkward interactions in public school and had no intention of going. Diana had invited Maria early in the school year with a handwritten note she had slipped into her locker, and when Maria found it, she crumpled it and threw it into the trash. She didn’t know much about Diana besides the fact that she was very pretty and very big breasted and spoke Spanish with another senior named Adriana; Maria had heard them in the bathroom once, and they reminded her of public school girls. Dígame, Adriana! En serio, gorda? She waited to come out of the stall until she was sure they had left.
On Friday, like always, Maria hadn’t planned to go to noon elective. She had planned to find Karen, so that the two could go to Cranky’s, where she would order a plain coffee with three packets of sugar and a good pour of whole milk. Maria liked to hang out in Cranky’s; it was quieter than the Starbucks, and somehow, homeless people always knew to stay out. As long as Maria was in her school skirt and paid for one item, the staff would leave her alone at a table for hours. The night before, as soon as she’d printed the letter and her father had left her alone in the room, Maria stood up to close the door. She opened Karen’s messenger box. There were at least six messages waiting to be read, all of them ending in exclamation points and followed by numerous question marks. What do you mean it’s bad?!?! the second to last one read. Maria and Karen had first become friends after discovering they took the same train home from school, and Maria liked her even more after finding out that she liked origami and art, and was half Chilean, too, and spoke even worse Spanish than Maria.
TELL ME!! Karen had begged.
You don’t take Friday noon electives, right? Let’s go to Cranky’s. A minute had passed and Karen still hadn’t answered. Maria insisted: I have to tell you in person.
Karen had agreed to meet Maria by the lockers on Friday, but now, Maria didn’t see her anywhere. Instead, Maria saw Diana skipping down the hall, a big grin on her face. She hadn’t thought about Diana since she’d first invited her to the club for students of color, and Diana hadn’t ever commented on her absence, so Maria didn’t think she had reason to avoid her. It was only once Diana grabbed and pulled her forearm that Maria realized the smile was for her.
“Maria!” Diana said, out of breath. “We’re meeting right now—the last meeting of the year! You’re coming, right?”
“Um,” Maria said, too surprised to muster anything else.
“Come! There will be donuts.”
There was something that made it hard for Maria to look at Diana in the face. You’re one of us, aren’t you? was what Diana’s look seemed to say, but this question, if Maria replied in the affirmative, would only lead to more. You know this song, don’t you? You’ve heard this joke, haven’t you? If the answer was no, Maria would be revealed to be a fraud. After several years at the school, she’d already worked so hard to learn the vocabulary (rhubarb, quiche, even Lapsang Souchong, made popular by one classmate whose parents who grew up in England), and she didn’t have any more space in her head for more. Maria avoided Diana’s eyes and caught sight of Diana’s neck instead. Something golden, an oval inscription, hung there. Was it some kind of religious pendant? Maria couldn’t tell.
“You should come,” Diana repeated before she walked away.
Karen still hadn’t texted her back when Maria walked through the door into room 323. For such a small school, Diana had rallied a significant number of students—at least, more than what Maria expected. Maria counted five. At the desk where the teachers usually sat was an Entenmann’s box filled with white powdered donuts. Maria had never seen anyone bring Entenmann’s donuts to school before, so she went up to the desk and took two. Diana passed around an agenda that included a bullet about making T-shirts and hosting a dance workshop. All the girls laughed when they heard how Diana snorted between every few of her giggles, the golden pendant climbing up and down her chest each time she gasped for breath.
Hello? Where are you?
Maria texted Karen, halfway through the meeting.
Sorry! Karen answered. In the art studio. Working on something good.
By the end of the period, Diana was outlining plans for the following year. When someone requested they switch to chocolate-covered donuts instead of sugared ones, Diana frowned. “You bring it then!” she shouted, and the room erupted again in giggles.
Maria watched in wonder as Diana’s laughter finally fizzled out in its own time, like a bubbling soda coming to a hush. “We could go to the Entenmann’s factory store,” Maria said, quietly, and it was the first time that anyone in the room heard her voice. It was a suggestion she wouldn’t give around Rocky, who told her she should never eat things packaged in plastic, and she felt her heart bang wildly in her chest. “There’s one not too far from where I live in Queens. They sell every kind of donut and cake there. We could get one of everything.”
“I’ve never been there.” Diana’s smile flattened. “Queens is far.”
“No, it’s not,” Maria said, more confidently. “Well, only by train. But it’s only like a thirty-minute drive.” Maria cocked her head, but Diana didn’t say anything. Her face was inexplicably blank, so Maria continued. “Don’t you live in Brooklyn?” Maria asked. “You could take the BQE! Ask your parents! I bet they’ll drive you!”
“Drive me!” Diana’s voice was stormy, and it elicited a hush over the room. She stared at Maria for what seemed like too long, and Maria sank into her chair. Finally, in a quieter voice that signaled the end of the conversation, Diana said, almost under her breath, “Cars are expensive.”
The girls gathered their things and stood. Maria followed their lead, making a wordless escape to the hall. There were five minutes left until their next period, and Maria hurried to her locker. If cars were expensive, that couldn’t include the brown Oldsmobile that her parents drove everywhere, whose reverse gear was so battered it made a tiny shriek every time they backed into a parking spot. Maria was sure that like her, Diana had a full scholarship to Bell Seminary, but something had fissured when Maria mentioned the car, and Maria knew she couldn’t piece it back together. She must’ve thought that Maria was just as privileged and spoiled as all the other Bell Seminary girls.
How could Maria prove herself different now? And why did she suddenly want to? It wasn’t a secret that Maria attended the school on a scholarship, because those who didn’t explicitly know likely assumed. But whenever the used-skirt sale was hosted at Bell Seminary in early September, Maria still became anxious about who was volunteering that day and would witness her and her mother browsing the racks. Maria’s mother hadn’t been trained like Maria had—what if Mrs. Lerner wanted to talk about rhubarb? What would Maria’s mother do? The shame Maria felt just at the thought of it made her anxious and hostile, which often meant that she and her mother would leave the school that day on nonspeaking terms, with Maria, inexplicably to her mother, on the verge of tears.
Now, she felt compelled to assert that she was poor. She wanted to drag Diana all the way to Queens and show her the weathered, old futon. She wanted to point to the plastic bins in the living room filled with winter coats because they didn’t have closets that could accommodate all the seasons. She wanted to show her the way they hung their shower towels to dry over the wooden rocking chair in the living room. But then the tour would stop because Diana didn’t need to see Maria’s fully stocked pantry or Ricky’s new PlayStation console. Sometimes, when Andres came over, he huffed and called Maria rich, just because she didn’t live in an apartment and there were so many flowers leading up to their door. But would Diana, who would be able to understand rich in the context of Bell Seminary, really see it the same way?
As she approached the lockers, she saw Laura and Rocky in front of her, their Longchamp bags buttoned and slung over their shoulders. They were huddled together, giggling. The pain in Maria’s chest dampened a little when Rocky turned to her with arms outstretched.
“Little Ms. J. Lo!” Rocky laughed. “How was Minority Club? How does it feel to be an empowered woman?”
She beckoned to Maria as if summoning her for a hug, but Maria took two paces backward instead. She felt the burn spread from her heart to her face, turning her cheeks bright red.
“What did they talk about?” Laura said.
Laura had never spoken to Maria before, but Maria knew she was Rocky’s friend. She’d seen them sneak out to smoke cigarettes together. Maria wanted to answer honestly, but all she could remember of the conversation was the way she had butchered its ending, with her comment about cars, her assumption that everyone had one, that everyone had been to the places she’d been to, even if, in Maria’s mind, that place was nowhere.
“Maria?” Laura cocked her head. “What did you guys talk about?”
“I don’t know,” Maria said. Laura’s face looked bony and gruesome, even though most girls in the grade called it gorgeous.
Rocky hadn’t stopped laughing. She was bent over Laura’s arm for support as her chest rose and fell in giggles. Blinking furiously, Maria looked up, then down, then sideways—anywhere to throw off the gravitational pull that kept trying to bring her to tears.
“Oh come on, Laura,” Rocky said. “She’s a strong woman now, so we shouldn’t fuck with her. Her homies will come after us.”
Maria blinked herself into a grin. Rocky was right; a strong woman wouldn’t have eyes like a swollen lemon rind, so easy from which to draw liquid. But as Rocky and Laura smirked at each other and as the two of them moved in tandem from the lockers down the hall to their next class, it occurred to Maria that behind that dispassionate mask, the one that could reabsorb water like a pot of soil, the one that grinned and swallowed and calmed and quieted, there might not be a strong woman at all. She tried thinking of Diana flicking her hair. What would Diana want her to do?
“That’s right,” Maria called. Laura turned around. “Or I’ll come after you myself.”
Eso! She heard an imaginary Diana cheering her on.
“You hear that, Lore?” Rocky whooped. “She’ll come after you herself!”
Maria smiled. Rocky’s excitement was contagious. She felt herself getting giddy.
“You better watch out.” Maria looked Laura up and down. “Lore.”
“I told you, Laura! Shelly is the real thing!” Rocky let go of Laura’s arm and linked into Maria’s. “Stay on Shelly’s good side. Or else.”
Rocky escorted Maria to her next class, the two of them laughing loudly. But once Maria was inside the classroom, she started to feel funny, like a large rock had settled at the bottom of her stomach. She wasn’t sorry about what she said to Laura. But it didn’t feel right, this pretending to be tough. If she continued this way, maybe she’d eventually forget who she was. Maybe she’d eventually become a mirror, except instead of showing a perfect reflection, she’d appear distorted, a fun house of all the wrong ideas. It would be terrible. It would be a life sentence. And it wouldn’t affect anyone else but Maria, who would always remain not a strong woman, but unseen, an alone-feeling girl.
For the rest of the school day, Maria was shuffled around by the moving tides of blue kilts at Bell Seminary. In that ocean of girls going to and from class, Maria eventually forgot about Laura. But when Rocky invited her to get food after school, Maria still hesitated, knowing that she only had a couple of bills in her backpack. “I’ll get you,” Rocky whispered, meaning to reassure her, but sounding like a bogeyman instead.
Maria had meant to find Karen, but by the time Maria went looking for her, Karen had already left to take the train to Queens alone. Karen never hung out with Rocky’s friends, and she scrunched up her nose when Maria talked about them—and Maria could understand why. Rocky’s friends were popular girls, mean girls who wore push-up bras and hiked up their skirts to show off the scars they’d cut into their own thighs. They bragged about knowing where to find cocaine, and they did shitty things to everyone not in their clique, like when one of them took Karen’s textbook ri
ght out of her locker, and poor Karen, who was always so organized and responsible, nearly lost her mind looking for it. When Laura returned it at the end of the year, Karen almost cried in frustration. Maria, despite her performance this afternoon, was uneasy around them, too—especially when they fussed over each other, comparing how much their skirts lifted off their backsides. The bigger their butts, the more they said they hated themselves, even though they were, objectively, tiny girls. They said things like that and more all the time, things that convinced Maria that to them, she must seem like a horrible monster.
Patrick’s was a sit-down place that everyone knew for its milkshakes and fries. Bell Seminary girls went to Patrick’s during free periods, and then made a detour around the school, and when they came back, they smelled distinctly like teenagers: cheap tobacco and chocolate milk.
“Hey, how about we get pizza instead?” Maria said as they ran out onto the street. They were anxious from being cooped up all day and eager to fill up new spaces. She and Rocky trailed behind Danielle and Laura, who had coupled up, arms linked. Maria only had a five-dollar bill in her backpack, and at Patrick’s, all she could get with that much money was a pickle and a side of fries. Even though Rocky had already promised to buy, Maria didn’t like the idea of Rocky paying for Maria when everyone else would be paying for themselves.
They Could Have Named Her Anything Page 6