by Gary Soto
"Then what are we doing here?" Marisa asked. She wondered if Rene had brought her there to wrap his skinny arms around her thick middle, and possibly bury his face into her neck. But she was wrong about his intentions. Rene wanted to exercise his masculinity in a different way.
He lay on a bench, spit into his palms, and said, "Pile it on."
"Get out of here!"
"Come on, Marisa," he begged. "I want to get strong. I wouldn't lift weights in the presence of anyone but you."
He's so cute, she thought tenderly. She handed him a bar with weights on each end. He accepted the burden with a grunt.
"It's heavy. What do we have here—fifty pounds?"
Marisa didn't have the heart to tell him that he was lifting the equivalent of two soup cans tied on the ends of a broomstick.
"It's dark in here. I can't read the numbers. But, yeah, it's about fifty pounds, maybe more."
He did a set of ten lifts, got up smacking his hands, and announced, "I want to get me swolles, some muscle."
Marisa picked up the pen that had rolled from his shirt pocket.
"Every day I want to come here and pump iron!" Rene flexed his left, then right, biceps. "I want to be like the Terminator."
"If you want me to help you, then give me a kiss." Marisa couldn't believe she had said that!
His arms became as limp as wet noodles. "A kiss?" he asked weakly as he lowered his head. He gazed down at the weights on the ground. "How about one more set first?"
He did two more sets, grunting through clenched teeth. They returned to the main quad of the campus just as the bell began to ring. Lunchtime was over, along with Marisa's opportunity to push her boy against the wall and force a kiss out of him. But she did blurt out, "Rene, you got to do something about your socks."
"They're clean."
"Nah, homeboy, your clothes ain't tight." She felt pity for the guy. "You can't wear white socks like you do."
Rene peeked at the lower extremities of his high-water pants.
"Your socks gotta match your pants."
"My mom never says anything." He offered his baffled face to her.
Marisa propped her hands on her hips and wiggled her bottom. "Big boy, do I look like your mama?"
Rene smiled as he tugged on his pants legs, trying to hide the blazing whiteness of his socks. "No, you look like..." He began his asthmatic laughter. "You look—honk—like—honk—my—honk, honk— my hot mama!"
They put their first kiss on hold.
***
It was early evening when Alicia called.
"Marisa, it's me."
Marisa closed her bedroom door to block out the sound of the mixer going at high speed in the kitchen. "What's going on?"
Silence.
"Are you mad at me?" Marisa asked.
Alicia didn't answer the question. "How come you're at that new school? You think you're better than us?" Her voice sounded forced and unnatural, as if she had been practicing the lines of a bad play and couldn't get them right.
"I never said I was better than you." Marisa was hurt. She raised a fingernail to her mouth and chewed.
"I didn't say that. Some other girl said that."
Marisa pictured her so-called friends cutting her up, calling her a coconut—brown on the outside but white at the core. They were probably calling her fat, tangle haired, smelly maybe, and extending their insults to her family.
"I don't care what other people think. They're stupid. I'm happier over there."
"How come you don't like it over here?"
"Here" was a school with no working drinking fountain, no nets on the basketball rims, no toilets that flushed consistently, no teachers who hadn't had their cars keyed or tires poked with ice picks. "Here" was a school whose flag could only be hoisted halfway up.
"I'll be straight-up and tell you I don't like Washington," Marisa stated firmly. "It's nasty. I just want to do something different." To change the subject, she asked Alicia how her leg was. She almost asked about Roberto.
"When am I going to see you?" Alicia asked. "I'm going crazy in my room."
Marisa felt for her friend. "Yeah, you're stuck in bed."
"Nah, it hurts a little bit, but I can get around."
They made plans to get together at a school car wash at Marisa's old school, Washington.
"Heard from Roberto?" Marisa risked asking.
"He left some messages on my machine, but I'm not calling him back."
"Right on, girl." Marisa told her friend that she had to go, that her mother was screaming for help in the kitchen.
"I miss you," Alicia murmured.
Marisa was confused. First Alicia had called to say that a bunch of shanky classmates were talking about her. Then she was being all friendly.
"I'll call you," she told Alicia.
In the kitchen her mother was licking the blades of the hand mixer.
"You want some?" her mother asked. She handed Marisa a whirly blade white with frosting. Marisa took the blade and made a swipe with her fìnger. As she licked the frosting she warned herself, "That's twenty calories and more if I keep going!" She set the blade into the sink. "What did you want, Mom?"
"I want you to finish the cake." Her mother pointed at a lopsided cake that required a layer of frosting. "Use a plastic spatula."
Marisa plastered the cake with frosting and then helped make frijoles. She oiled a pan, set it on a burner, and after a long minute scooped beans into it. The beans, little troopers, sizzled and marched in the pan.
"Mom, do you think I should be going to Hamilton instead of staying at Washington?" Marisa mashed the beans and added a handful of yellow cheese.
Wearing mismatched oven mitts, her mother slowly brought a pan of red enchiladas out of the oven and set it on the counter. "Claro. Of course you should." She took off the mitts and peeled back the aluminum foil. Steam rose against her face. "Why? Don't you like it there?"
"Yeah, I do, except I just got a call from Alicia."
"Pobrecita. How's her leg?"
"She's home and she's getting around on crutches." Marisa hesitated but finally informed her mother that some shisty girls were talking about her.
"So let those cholas talk about you like that!" Her mother was furious, like a blender on high. "Just because you're going to a better school. They're jealous!" She cupped her hands and yelled to the den, "Rafael! It's dinner."
"I like it at my new school," Marisa said.
"I know you do. You're going to do well." She cupped her hands and called out a second time, "Rafael—ven! We're waiting for you."
Marisa poured iced tea from a pitcher, and instead of doctoring hers with scoops of sugar, she took it plain. When she cut into her enchilada, steam rose and moistened her forehead. She blew on a forkful and told her father, "Dad, I'm trying out for a play."
"¿Cómo?" His big mustache went up and down as he chewed.
"I'm going out for Romeo and Juliet."
He chewed and chewed, cleared his throat, wiped his mouth with his napkin, picked up a grain of arroz that had fallen from his fork onto the table, and remarked, "I used to know Romeo and Juliet."
"Dad, get out of here," Marisa said in disbelief.
"No, really," he said as one hand absently rubbed the front of his stomach. "Back in high school. There was a guy, Romeo Garcia, and his girlfriend was Julieta Mendoza. They were an item."
As she drank, Marisa stared at her father through the bottom of her glass of iced tea. Her father seldom veered far from the truth. She listened as he told her how Romeo loved his Julieta until this other guy came along.
"Who was this other dude?"
He looked her straight in his eye. "It was me."
Marisa's mother slapped his arm. "Mentiroso. You were too busy chopping cotton to have a girlfriend."
"Chopping cotton." He chuckled with both hands on the ball of his stomach. "That's how I met Julieta." He winked at his daughter and went for a second helping.
Mari
sa was in bed, near the edge of sleep with her math book in her face, when her cell phone rang. She rose up onto her elbows and plucked her phone from the headboard, where she kept her stuffed animals.
"Yeah?" she asked, face draped with her hair. She swept it out of her eyes, which were still closed but suddenly opened when the voice asked, "How's Alicia?"
Roberto—the rat, la rata.
"Why are you calling?" Marisa glared at the clock on her chest of drawers. The clock glowed 10:18.
"I'm calling because Alicia won't answer her phone."
"She don't want to see you. You broke her leg. Worse, you cheated on her and Alicia told me that girl in the photo was muy fea." She snapped closed her math book and set it roughly onto the floor.
Marisa could hear Roberto swallow. He muttered, "How come our school ain't good enough for you?"
She clicked off the phone as she muttered, "Tonto jerk." But a second later the phone rang again. She picked it up and roared a frosty, "I said she don't want to talk to you."
"You don't want to talk to me?"
It was Rene, a lamb with no sins except bad taste in clothes.
"Oh, Rene, it's you! I'm sorry." Marisa sat up and rubbed the hammer of her right fist against her sleepy eyes.
"I'm calling you because..."
"Because you like me?" Marisa risked. "You're so sweet."
"Yeah—" He giggled. "And because I got up to doing fifteen push-ups without stopping."
"My Terminator!" Marisa crowed.
"Oh, come on, Marisa, I'm not really that strong yet."
Marisa could see him bashfully lowering his face. She pictured him doing each of the fifteen push-ups and shaking from the pain as he touched his nose to the floor.
"Yes, you are!"
"Oh, my," Rene whispered and then told her that his mother had bought him a pack of blue socks.
Chapter 6
After school Marisa leafed through a worn copy of Romeo and Juliet and was smart enough to figure out that neither she nor Rene could play the leads, though she had a faint inkling that perhaps they could bring a new angle to those roles. After all, couldn't Juliet be fat and Romeo skinny? And weren't they in love?
They were straddling a bench under a tree that had given up all its leaves. The school campus was nearly empty. Somewhere a janitor was vacuuming a classroom. Somewhere kids were playing football on a brownish field.
"I could be a really, really skinny Romeo," Rene remarked. He handed Marisa a stick of gum.
"Then I'm Juliet." Marisa unwrapped the gum from its silvery foil and folded it into her mouth. "Thanks for the gum, Romeo." She turned her attention momentarily to a lone skateboarder riding halfway up a cement wall nicked with wheel skids.
"The gum is from my trick-or-treat candy."
Marisa shoved him. "Getta outta here! You didn't go trick-or-treating. Anyway, Halloween ain't for another week."
"It's from my last year's stash."
Marisa rolled the gum onto the carpet of her tongue and was ready to deposit it into her hand when Rene said, "Just kidding."
"What's your mother like?" Marisa asked.
"Tall and kind of strict." He chewed his gum loudly. "What's yours like?"
"Short and sometimes really angry about things." In truth, her mother had softened. She was glad about her daughter's new school, though Marisa had told her nothing about Rene. "What's your dad like?"
"Short," Rene answered. "But my parents are divorced." He looked into the distance as if his father was somewhere far away and he was trying to catch a glimpse of him. Marisa sighed and wished she hadn't asked the question. They laced their hands together and wiggled their fingers.
"What about the play?" Marisa asked. "I don't know any of these characters." She ran down the cast: Mercutio, Escalus, Benvolio, Nurse. Marisa tapped the word nurse.
"I'll play the nurse, like you said earlier. I could play a person helping other people."
"Marisa, it's not like a nurse, nurse. This character is sort of like ... a babysitter."
Marisa wrinkled her forehead, confused.
"In the play, the nurse is Juliet's helper, you know, like someone who helps her dress and stuff. She's like a confidante."
"Where did you learn to talk like that?" Marisa asked. "I never use words like that one you said."
"The word is confidante. It means someone you tell your innermost thoughts to without worrying. What you tell that person is kept between you two."
"Oh, so if I tell you something really private, you'll keep it to yourself?"
"That's right." Rene tapped the toe of his shoe. "So what are you going to tell me?"
"I'm not going to tell you anything. You'll tell somebody in your chess club."
"I won't! I'm your confidant." He made a large swooping crossing motion across his heart. His Adam's apple rode up and down as he waited for her to deliver a secret. "So what is it?"
Right then the skateboarder rolled back, hands in his pockets, and taunted, "Hey, doofus!"
Marisa's fists clenched. "What did you say?" She pulled her leg over the bench like she was getting off a horse, ready to smack him one.
The skateboarder sailed away, shirttail flapping. His greenish hair was like a horn on top of his head.
"He's a pimply güey." Her chest was heaving. She was aware that her new classmates were sizing the two of them up, and earlier in the week she had heard snickers when they'd passed by together in the hallway. But this was the first direct verbal strike. What is it to him, that ugly fool?
"I don't care," Rene said. "So what's your secret?"
Marisa breathed in and out several times as she calmed herself. She assembled nice thoughts and, nervously turning the ring on her thumb, announced, "Well, Mr. Confidence, I have never had a beso laid on me."
"What?"
"A kiss, homeboy."
"You mean your grandmother never kissed you?"
"No, not like that! You know what I mean." She closed her eyes and waited for Rene to bring his face toward hers. She waited and waited, then peeked through the shadows of her eyelashes. Her eyes sprang open. Rene was no longer next to her.
From the corner of her eye she could see the skateboarder who had taunted Rene. He was on his back, his legs fanning in and out, hurt by a spill. He meant nothing to her. "What are you doing?" she called to Rene, who was at a nearby trash can.
"Getting rid of my chewing gum," he hollered in return as he tried to shake the gum into the trash can. The gum was stuck to his fingers.
Oh, he's such a nerd, she thought, then closed her eyes and waited for him to return.
Rene tasted of Juicy Fruit when Marisa finally got her first beso.
The auditorium was dark and the students were half lit in the stage lights. Marisa's stomach turned nervously. She reviewed the students—one she recognized from her English class—and then the director who had his eyeglasses sitting on his forehead. His shirt cuffs were rolled up. His belly bounced when he took a long step, demonstrating an action.
"I don't know," Marisa said nervously. Her feet seemed to stick to the floor.
"Come on," Rene begged, and hooked his arm into hers.
They read for parts, and they were assigned to be in the chorus. The director, Mr. Mitchell, soothed them by saying they were stupendous actors but singing voices were also needed.
"But I can't sing," Marisa whined to Rene.
"You can try whisper-singing," Rene suggested. "And there's so many of us that if we sound really bad no one will notice." He took Marisa's hand into his. "You were great up there. They should have given you a speaking part."
"Get out of here!" Giggling, Marisa unlaced her fingers from his hand. "I was terrible and you know it!" She had been asked to read lines—she was playing Juliet's mother—and she fumbled the ancient words, finally slapping the book against her thigh and saying to the drama coach, "People don't talk like this!" Holding her book up to her face to hide her embarrassed laughter, Marisa moved stage left w
hile the director countered, "Oh, no, you did very, very well."
"No, really, we can practice singing. I'm going to practice in the shower." Rene then asked, "So how did I carry myself?"
So how did I carry myself? she pondered. For a moment Marisa assumed that he was quoting Shakespeare because he sounded—what was that word?—theatrical. He sounded English.
"What do you mean?"
"In my audition!"
Rene had read the part of Mercutio.
"You were tight."
"I was tight? I was that good?" Rene beamed and scratched his knee absently. "I have something to confess, Marisa."
Marisa snuggled up to him. "What, buddy boy?" She could smell his breath flavored with chewing gum.
"Well, you may not believe this, but I'm not really what you think I am." He flirted by blinking his eyelashes.
"What?" Marisa wanted to know everything about her first boyfriend, to delve into his secrets. He was gangly and smart, and had an odd laugh. But what wheels turned inside his head?
"I'm not really a nerd."
Marisa covered her mouth with her hand, laughing. She slapped his shoulder. "Yeah, you are."
"No, really! I'm very Shakespearean, very manly!"
Marisa laughed. Rene bent over and, through the fingers covering his mouth, honked out a funny ducklike laugh.
But Marisa was convinced that he was a nerd when he rode his bike to the car wash sponsored by her old high school that weekend. It was midmorning and the car wash was going poorly—only three cars had been washed and vacuumed. And the principal's car, a large Buick, was nasty with fingerprints all over the window and the ashtray filled with cigarette butts. He hadn't bothered to clean it up even a little bit.
Rene was holding his hand over his nose as he rode up.
"What happened?" Marisa first thought that he was going to pull his hand away from his face and reveal a fake nose and possibly a set of vampire teeth. But when he did she saw a rivulet of blood.
"I fell off my bike," he explained as he rolled his bicycle toward the chain-link fence near the tennis courts.
"Someone jumped you, huh?" She scanned the street.
One of the girls from Washington approached them. "Who's he?"