Maria had both hands in her hoodie’s front pocket, so there was hardly any room left between the two girls when Rocky looped her arm into Maria’s elbow and left it there as they walked.
“It’s fine, girl,” Rocky said, her arm limp on Maria’s. “I’ll spot you.”
Maria didn’t like being touched without first being asked. The sudden presence of another body forced her into an awkward consciousness of her own, and she always felt a little ungracious once she tried to initiate disengagement. But now, as Rocky looped her arm into Maria’s, Maria remembered how earlier, Rocky had left Laura’s arm for Maria’s, and she felt a peculiar tinge of pride. She carried Rocky along on the street, quickening her pace so they even passed Laura and Danielle. Inside, she and Rocky marched toward a table, the other girls following closely behind.
When the waiter came around, each of them asked for milkshakes with their food. When it was Maria’s turn, she didn’t even bother to glance at Rocky for approval. With her dad, she was used to ordering tap water with ice, but so was Ricky and so was her mom. If all the other girls were going to order a milkshake, she would order a milkshake, too. While the rest of the girls ordered chocolate, Maria asked for strawberry.
“I still can’t believe it,” Laura said once the waiter walked away. She was speaking with a vehemence that made her left eye shrink as the right eye grew bigger. “It’s absolutely ridiculous!”
“It is pretty shitty,” Rocky said. Maria looked at her from the corner of her eye, her other eye transfixed on the door. “I just bought this new Longchamp.”
“Well, that’ll be okay,” Laura said matter-of-factly. “It’s anything better that’s banned.”
Rocky broke into a toothy smile. “Lucky my Dior bag’s too small for my books.”
That afternoon, in the auditorium, the school had announced a new rule to go into effect starting next year: no more designer handbags. All textbooks were to be carried in one of two options: backpacks like Maria’s, or plain oversize totes.
“It’s just a denial of a basic right. Why should my freedom of expression be infringed upon just because of someone else’s hurt feelings?” Laura’s eyes darted to the window, then darted back to the table. For a split second, she looked right at Maria, taking Maria by surprise.
“It’s not my fault if people are jealous of me,” Laura said.
The waiter came back with plates lined with sesame buns scarred with grill marks, strips of chicken fingers, and french fries. As the girls all fell quiet around their platters, Maria thought of the glossy magazines that the Bell Seminary girls left lying around classrooms and the student lounge, the ones that warned about overindulging. She remembered that cravings were to be heeded; if not, you risked overindulging later. There were a couple of cravings Maria found herself fighting against: one was to finish her milkshake too quickly, but the more salient one was to resist grabbing Laura’s veggie burger and slapping it against Laura’s pallid face. Laura pushed a french fry around her plate, taking tiny nibbles off it just to put it back down and pick up a new one, until all the fries on her plate were three-quarters bitten. At school, on the slight chance that they ever found each other alone, Laura always took out her cell phone rather than speak to Maria. It irritated Maria to know that this was a person that Rocky called a friend, but now, the irritation felt stronger, less shakable, and not like irritation at all. It was while staring at one of Laura’s browned fries, overcooked and nubby, that Maria realized that she hated her.
“I agree,” Rocky said, wiping grease off her mouth with a napkin. “I mean, what’s the big deal if I have a nice bag? I don’t understand why that bothers people. And if you’re jealous”—Rocky lifted two fingers to her mouth as she swallowed—“then that’s your own problem.”
A brief silence fell over the table. Maria licked her finger and began pressing it to her plate for crumbs. Of course, it didn’t matter what bags they used. Everyone had already seen the pictures of Laura’s family vacation to Paris and Rome last year, and Prague and Berlin the year before that. Anyone at school would be able to see the differences between the students, even if the annual donor catalog didn’t spell it out for them. In the world of Bell Seminary, no school rule or regulation could trick Maria into feeling that she belonged.
“You know who really runs Bell Seminary?” Laura finally said. “A bunch of fucking communists.”
Rocky looked at Maria and smiled. Her plate was full of detritus, shredded onions and a pockmarked bun from where she’d scooped out the bulk of the bread and rolled it into a ball at the edge of her plate—empty carbs, she had said, as if they didn’t already know why. When the waiter came by, he pulled a notebook from his breast pocket, ripped out a piece of paper, and laid it facedown on the table. “Pay at the counter,” he said.
“I’ll pay.”
“Rocky, no,” Laura said, but Rocky was out of her seat, following the waiter’s trail. Danielle yawned, and just as she did, Laura bent at the waist and disappeared under the table. When she came back up, she was dragging her bag onto her lap and unzipping its wide flap open. Maria looked at the label: Prada. Maria smiled to think it would be the last time she would ever see it.
“I just don’t understand why she always tries to pay for everything,” Laura said, frowning. “We each got a special and a milkshake. Each of us puts in fifteen. And a dollar or two for tip.”
Maria picked up a napkin and started tearing its edge as Danielle reached for her own bag tucked under her chair. There was no use looking in her backpack; she knew exactly what she’d find there, the single bill crumpled somewhere in her front pocket, thin as a Post-it Note.
Laura now had both her and Danielle’s contributions in hand. The bills were crisp and flat, as if they had just been pulled from between the pages of a book or from under a steaming iron. Maria looked away from the table. Even if Maria wanted to pay Rocky back, she’d have to go through her mother first, and Maria knew she’d never hear the end of it. I make food every night!—she could hear her mother yelling with her propensity for always rounding up—And you spent twenty dollars on a cheeseburger?
“You know you don’t need to buy our friendship, don’t you?” Laura said, just as Rocky returned to the table. Laura’s smile was odd and her laugh inappropriate, as if she were recalling an unspeakable joke. Sometimes, Maria would burst into laughter on the train platform recalling something Andres had said, and everyone’s angry eyes would find her, as if Maria had awoken them from a deep and luxurious sleep. Laura was looking at Rocky as if they shared something like that, something they didn’t want anyone else to know.
A sheepish smile scuttled across Rocky’s face, as she looked at the wad of cash Laura held out to her. “That’s too much.”
“We actually owe you more.”
“It’s on me,” Rocky said, ignoring the folded bills Laura held to her face. Maria watched in wonder as Rocky grabbed her bag from where it hung over her seat and led the way toward the exit. Outside the smudged windowpanes, it was raining. Rocky held the door for the rest of the girls, and Maria let everyone else walk ahead of her. When it was Maria’s turn to pass Rocky, she leaned in to her ear.
“Thank you,” Maria said, and without warning, her eyes became warm and filmy. Rocky could’ve taken the bills, but she didn’t, and Maria knew she had done her this kindness. She was sure that Rocky understood what she meant, but Rocky seemed bewildered. “I mean,” Maria began, unsure of how to explain.
“It’s pouring!” Laura yelled as Maria and Rocky looked at one another under the canopy of the doorway. Their feet were getting splattered. Maria started to shiver.
“I’ll see you Monday, okay, Shell?”
Laura, Danielle, and Rocky all went down the street in one direction, huddled beneath one enormous umbrella held high in the air by Laura, whose advantage was her willowy height. They’d be at their apartments in minutes. But Maria went in another direction, her sockless feet becoming numb with water. She zigzagged down
the street. She would be soaked by the time she got to the station, soaked even further on her walk down Queens Boulevard, soaked as she climbed the stairs to her house. It was only after her mother opened the door, ushering her inside the house with several towels, wrapping them around Maria’s hair until it was dry, that Maria would be home, and warm.
CHAPTER 4
Birthdays in Harlem called for Dominican cake. Whenever they went up to her grandmother’s apartment, Maria could expect it. Technically, customers chose between an array of options for filling: guava paste, strawberry, dulce de leche. Maria’s family never ordered anything other than dulce de leche—a thick layer of it smeared between two stacked yellow cakes coated with white sugar frosting. Everyone considered the frosting the worst part, never mind the unhealthiest, and they scraped it off their pieces in mounds. Maria, on the other hand, ate all of it, including what was left in heaps atop empty plates—Hey, are you not gonna eat that?—and when that was done, she’d go after what was left in the thin streaks under her fingernails, lapping it up with her teeth, made slightly more savory from the tart of her skin. When Maria saw the purple sugar flowers, she imagined them coming apart on her tongue.
“Mine!” She watched as her mother slid the knife down in a motion she couldn’t take back. The knife came up and left broken petals in its place. Half the frosting had come off one side and fell to the paper cake board. Maria had asked to cut her own piece, for reasons that now were apparent. “I’ll do it,” Maria’s mother had told her. “You don’t know how to.”
“You never let me do anything!” Maria said, turning away from her mother, who was offering Maria a mangled cake slice. Instead, Maria moved toward the counter and picked up the only plate that was there, a tiny sliver so small nobody had claimed it yet. She walked past everyone crowded around the table, past the dining room, and stood in the farthest corner of her grandmother’s kitchen. She was pushing around the cake with her fork when she saw Jonathan close the refrigerator. When he looked up, he saw her and smiled. Maria was relieved. She was getting bored alone.
“What happened with your mom? She’s over there saying you’re a drama queen.”
“What is that?”
Maria aimed her fork at Jonathan’s glass and its hissing, dragon-red contents.
“Sprite. And cranberry juice.”
“Why?” she asked.
Jonathan shrugged. “It’s good. How’s your boyfriend?”
“Um, he’s fine.” With the side of her fork, Maria carved out a baby-size bite. “We’re going to a party tonight.”
“Really? Where?”
“Um,” she said, swallowing. “In Maspeth.”
“With who?”
“Me and Andres. Karen’s coming, too.”
“La morenita?”
“Huh? No. Karen. She goes to Bell Seminary, but she lives in Queens, too.”
“With the long hair?”
“Yeah,” Maria answered. She was taking microscopic bites, rolling the frosting around from one cheek to the other until finally swallowing.
“That’s the one that was over at the house the other day?” Jonathan asked. “Your rich friend, right?”
“They’re all rich,” she said, putting her fork down, and then immediately picking it back up. There was really no cake left on her plate, other than a tiny scrape of frosting. “But some are richer than others,” Maria continued. “Karen’s the one you met. She’s the one with the straight, dark hair. She was just over at the house last weekend. Chilean.”
“Yeah?” He looked up, as if he were scanning the skies of his mind, a file he might be able to drag down and open. “Maybe if you show me a picture.” He looked back at Maria, and with a lowered voice he asked, “Are you gonna get drunk tonight?”
“I’m gonna try.”
Jonathan laughed. He was Maria’s youngest uncle and always asked about Maria’s personal affairs, including Andres. When Jonathan told Maria that she should watch out, that it sometimes looked like she was taking the relationship too seriously, Maria would tell him that Andres wasn’t long-term, and that even Andres knew it. Are you going to leave me for one of those white guys you love? Andres would ask her, and Maria would giggle and imagine a line of half-naked white boys at her beck and call like a harem. She didn’t tell him about the school dances where she lingered too long in the bathroom, abandoned by all of her classmates who had been pulled one by one to the dance floor. I love you, Maria, and if you leave me, I’ll kill you, Andres would say, a thick piece of her leg in his hand. Maria had imagined a distraught Andres pacing the streets of the Upper East Side with the machete his father had brought from Peru and stored in their front-door closet next to the umbrellas. Would he really kill her because of how much he loved her? Of course, she didn’t actually want to be murdered by him, but she liked what it might symbolize. A crime of passion, just like in the movies. She had taken him by the crown of his head to kiss him.
Yes, I’m going to leave you, Maria would tease as he slapped her thighs with so much force that she felt flecks of her heart become dislodged, like dust beaten out of a floor rug.
Now, there was nothing on Maria’s plate. She was sucking the prong of her fork clean.
“You want more?” Jonathan asked.
“No,” she lied, still angry at her mother, and by extension, every adult. Besides, Maria couldn’t tell Jonathan everything. She had a suspicion that in the end he would be just like her brother, Ricky, who was probably just like her father; they all just wanted to control her. They all gave her the same disapproving looks whenever she wore tight dresses out of the house.
Jonathan followed Maria across the kitchen as she went to the garbage can and lifted the lid with the foot pedal.
“Hey,” Jonathan said. “When are you gonna hook me up with one of your rich friends? Hook me up with one of them.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’ll probably think you’re ugly,” Maria lied, again. She knew what Rocky thought of Latino boys. Amazing lovers, she’d said.
Jonathan was indignant. “Ugly? I’m the most good-looking guy they’ll ever see.”
“Jonathan.” Maria dropped her plate into the trash can. “I’m not hooking you up with my friends.”
“Why not, though?”
“Why would you want to get with a white girl?” She asked the question aloud as if she hadn’t fantasized about the day she could tell Andres that she was dating a boy who wore boat shoes. She imagined Rocky, Rocky with skin the color of soy milk, whose green veins shone so brightly under her skin it was as if they were permanently held under a flashlight. With the satisfaction a child derives from saying a word she has been instructed to never say aloud, she added, “She’s not even that cute.”
Just as she moved away from the garbage, Maria’s older brother walked by, maneuvering around her with an empty plate.
“What do you think, Ricky?” Jonathan said. “Do you think Maria’s blanquita friends are cute?”
“Nah.” Ricky put his foot down on the pedal and threw his plate on top of Maria’s.
“See!” Maria shot Jonathan a nasty look.
Jonathan sucked his teeth. “Oh come on! You would pipe! Show us a picture, Maria.”
“No!” Maria shouted.
“I wouldn’t pipe.”
“You would!”
“Pipe?” Maria’s voice was getting even louder trying to drown out the two men. “Do you really think I don’t know what you’re saying?”
Ricky and Jonathan looked at each other, then looked away.
“You’re both gross.” Maria drove her hands into her hips. “Neither of you are allowed to go anywhere near my friends.” Maria thought of Rocky again, her straight hair, her paleness, the thinness she elongated and calcified with stilettos. “Especially not you, Jonathan. You’re almost thirty!”
Jonathan scoffed. “As if you girls are so innocent.” He went to the living room and Ricky followed, leaving Mar
ia alone in the kitchen again, by the can overflowing with balls of crumpled trash, like flowers in full bloom.
Mostly due to how cluttered the apartment was and how much tinier it got when there were so many people inside, visits to her grandmother’s apartment were always short. Before the sun had fully set, they were leaving. Maria’s father went downstairs to get the car and pull up in front. “Take this for me,” Maria’s mother said, holding out a Key Food bag full of leftover forks and plates. Maria watched as her mother disappeared to say bye to her grandmother. She went back into the kitchen and glanced at the counter. There was still so much left when she took the knife out of the sink and carved out her second piece of cake. This time, she cut her own perfect slice. Nice and neat. This time, it was thick.
The Key Food bag was still looped around her elbow as she ate. When she looked up from a mouthful of simultaneous bites, she saw that her mother and her grandmother had come to the doorway, her mother’s hand around her grandmother’s wrist. Their faces were pointed at her as they whispered, and Maria couldn’t tell if they were looking just past her at the window, where the sound of the block poured in despite the metal bars, or if they were staring at her. She only had one piece of cake—one very tiny piece of cake—and now she was on a second, more moderately sized—but she felt her jeans pressing up against the inner wings of her thighs, and she crossed her legs self-consciously, hoping that folding them over each other would help make them look smaller. Her mother and grandmother went on whispering, and if she could have, she would have crumpled into the floor, into the tiny crack of plaster that separated tile from tile. Stop looking at me, she would have shouted, but it was one thing to say that to her mother, and something else entirely to say it to her grandmother.
“Maria! Come say goodbye to Mamita.”
Filled with dread, Maria put down her plate and crossed the kitchen to the doorway. Her grandmother brought her hands up to her shoulders and held them, forcefully, with a grasp so intent it startled Maria, as if Maria was the rail to a staircase her grandmother was climbing down.
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