by Reyna Grande
I had never been to the dentist in my life, and luckily we hadn’t really had tooth problems. In Mexico we never had money for candy, but we also hadn’t had money for things such as toothbrushes. We would have to scrub our teeth with our fingers coated with baking soda.
I couldn’t help feeling a little afraid about going to the dentist. In Mexico, Abuelita Chinta had given me mint leaves to chew on when my molar started to bother me. I didn’t think I was going to get mint leaves this time.
Mila and I sat in the reception area to wait. I glanced at the pictures of a turkey, a pumpkin, and a pilgrim’s hat taped on the door. There were similar decorations in my classroom. Mila fidgeted in her seat. Once in a while she would pat her wavy black hair. I found myself admiring her skin, as I’d done many times. It was two shades lighter than my own, and it looked good in soft pinks and peaches. Her makeup, as always, was perfect. She had roses blooming on her cheeks and her lips were glossy. She had a faint scar from her nose to her upper lip because she was born with a cleft lip, but that didn’t take away from her looks. Mila wasn’t beautiful, but she was pretty and she was classy.
The dentist’s assistant came out and called out a name. When I didn’t answer, Mila nudged me and stood up. I went into the dentist’s room, and he asked me to lie down on a big leather chair. I jumped off as soon as it started reclining. The dentist laughed and said something in English, while pointing to the chair. All I understood was the word “Cindy.”
I sat there wondering how Mila felt about the dentist calling me by her daughter’s name. The few times Cindy had come to the house, I had noticed how uncomfortable she seemed around Mila. She didn’t come very often, and when she did come, it was because Mila had practically forced her to. Mila’s older son didn’t visit often either. Her second son had never come over, not even once.
Mila said my molar had a huge cavity and would have to come out to let the new tooth grow in. For the rest of the hour, Mila had to translate for me what the dentist said.
“Open your mouth, Cindy.
“That’s a good girl, Cindy.
“We’re almost done, Cindy.”
Mila didn’t look at me when she translated. She looked at the wall.
While the dentist worked on my mouth, I began to fantasize about what it would be like to be the real Cindy. To be Mila’s daughter. Would Mila not have fidgeted the way she was doing now while she stood nearby? Would she have allowed me—just as she allowed the real Cindy when she visited—to go into her and Papi’s bedroom without knocking, to lie down on their bed and watch TV? Would she have brushed my hair up in pigtails in the mornings? Let me sit in the kitchen and help her make dinner? Would she have stood by while Papi hit me with his belt?
“We’re almost done, Cindy,” the dentist said, and maybe it was the grogginess from the anesthesia, but I really liked the sound of that name. I began wishing I could stay in the dentist’s office forever, because as soon as we walked out that door, I would once again be Reyna.
“Your daughter was very good,” the receptionist said as Mila and I went out the door. Mila held me by the shoulders because I was feeling a bit dizzy and my mouth was numb and my lips felt three times their usual size. My lips throbbed as if they’d been stung by a scorpion.
“Thank you,” Mila said. I waved goodbye to the receptionist and gave her a groggy smile.
On the way home, Mila was very quiet. I wondered if she was thinking about her daughter.
“Are you in pain yet?” she asked as we pulled into the driveway.
“No, Mamá Mila,” I said. Maybe it was the anesthesia that had made me say that.
Mila took a deep breath and then looked at me. “Just call me Mila. I’m not your mom so you can’t call me Mamá. Just Mila, okay?” She said it gently, and yet I felt as if she had yelled at me. The harshness in her voice was very subtle, but I could hear it clearly.
With tears in my eyes, I said, “I’m sorry, Mila. I won’t do it again.” Then I got out of the car and went into the house, where I saw that my brother and sister were back from school.
“That’s what you get for being a traitor,” Mago said when I told her what I’d done. “She’s right. She’s not our mom. Why are you always trying to find mothers everywhere you go?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Besides, she broke up our parents’ marriage,” Mago continued. “And now you want to call her Mamá?”
I lowered my head in shame.
When we first arrived in the U.S., Mago and I went into Mila and Papi’s bedroom to look at her pretty clothes in the closet and to smell her perfumes. I knew Mila had noticed we did because a few days later Papi installed a new doorknob that locked, and from that moment on they would lock their door every time they left the house. But Mago and I were intrigued by Mila, the woman who, in part, was responsible for breaking up my parents’ twelve-year marriage. We wanted to know what it was that had made Papi prefer her over Mami. We thought that by looking at her clothes, or going through her toiletries, we would find the answer.
Maybe it was the pretty clothes she wore. During the day she wore her white nurse’s uniform because it was required at work, but on the weekends she wore capri pants and pretty blouses, leather sandals with delicate straps. For going out she had nice sets of skirt suits and silk blouses. Her jewelry box had faux pearl necklaces, pearl earrings, gold chains, fancy watches. She had different-colored high heels to match her outfits. Her perfumes were beautiful high-quality scents, not like the perfumes Mami used.
But beside her pretty looks and taste in clothes, Mila had other advantages Mami did not. Mila spoke English, which meant that Papi relied on her for nearly everything because he spoke only Spanish. Mila was a U.S. citizen. She wasn’t invisible in this country, as Papi was back then, and as Mami was while she was living here. Also, even though Mila was born in Mexico, she had been in this country since she was thirteen years old. She was forty years old when we came to live with her and Papi, and by living in the U.S. for most of her life, Mila wasn’t the typical Mexican woman. She wasn’t afraid of Papi. She didn’t cater to his every whim as women in Mexico are taught to do, as Mami had done while living with him. She also had an education and knew her way around this American society in a way Papi did not.
While in Mexico, Mami was so worried Papi would leave her for a gringa. Instead, he found Mila.
I told my sister that she was right. I was being a traitor to my own mother. But how could I make myself stop yearning for a mother when, ever since I was four years old, that is what I had done? And even to this day, I sometimes find myself yearning for her still.
“We have a father,” Carlos said. “That’s good enough for me.”
“You’re right,” I said, glancing at the kitchen where Mila was chopping vegetables. She didn’t like us to be in the kitchen with her. As a matter of fact, she didn’t really like us to be in any room with her. It wasn’t something that she would say to us, but it was the way she would tense up the moment we walked into the room. It was the way she would look at us, as if wishing it weren’t us, but her own children.
Papi came home and asked about my tooth. I took the blood-stained cotton out of my mouth so that he could see the gap where my molar used to be.
“I’m glad everything worked out,” Papi said. Then he walked into the kitchen and sat at the table to keep Mila company while she cooked.
“I’m not doing that again, you understand?” I heard Mila say. Papi opened a can of Budweiser and didn’t answer.
4
Reyna in fifth grade
ONE EVENING, MILA made spaghetti for dinner. The few times Mrs. Giuliano had made it at her house, I claimed not to be hungry so I wouldn’t have to eat it while I waited for Mago to pick me up. I loved Mrs. Giuliano’s food, except for the spaghetti.
Now Mila was putting a plate full of spaghetti in front of me, and at the sight of those long white strings I felt like running to the bathroom to throw up. I held on t
ight to my chair and looked away from the plate and tried to think of something beside Pablo and his worms.
In Mexico, most of the children I had known had the same body shape: a big, round belly full of roundworms and really skinny legs and arms. Carlos, Mago, Betty, and I were no exception. But there was one kid, a boy named Pablo, whose abdomen swelled beyond anything we could imagine. He looked as big as a pregnant woman. Abuelita Chinta said Pablo had a serious case of roundworms. I used to have nightmares of his belly exploding and hundreds of white wiggly worms spilling out.
Sometimes Abuelita Chinta would give Mago, Carlos, Betty, and me unripe guavas blended to a pulp. We would drink this concoction unwillingly because sometime later the pains would come. Horrible pains as if our intestines were twisting and twisting like wet clothes being wrung out before going up on the clothesline. We ran to the outhouse and emptied our bowels. No sooner had we come back into the house than we had to run back out again. Once, Carlos started screaming, and when we went to check on him, he was squatting on the ground as a worm wiggled out of him.
Sooner or later the worms would be pooped out. Abuelita Chinta said she was sorry to see us in pain, but we barely had enough to eat as it was, and the parasites were taking away the precious nutrients we ingested.
When we asked her why she wouldn’t give this drink to Pablo, Abuelita Chinta said that no amount of her guava drink could help the poor boy. She told Pablo’s mother that if he didn’t see the doctor soon, he would have serious health issues. When Pablo was nothing but a skeleton with a big belly, his family sold what few possessions they had and took Pablo away to Mexico City. The next time we saw him, his big stomach was gone! He had a scar on his abdomen, and he told us he had to have surgery to get the worms removed. It was a hideous scar. Raised and swollen, the stitches like the legs of a crawling centipede. After that, we hadn’t balked at the remedies Abuelita Chinta would give us. But even though Pablo was better, my nightmares took a long time to go away,
Mila went to the living room to watch a telenovela while Mago, Carlos, and I stayed in the kitchen to eat her spaghetti. I strained to hear the theme song playing in the living room. Mi vida eres tú y solamente tú …
I loved that telenovela. It was called Cristal and was from Venezuela, so the characters spoke with a strange Spanish accent. The story was about a girl whose mother had abandoned her as a baby, so she had grown up in an orphanage. Now, as a young woman, she was on her way to becoming a supermodel, and best of all, she and a rich handsome young man were in love! It was a Cinderella story, one of my favorite fairy tales, except I couldn’t go watch it with Mila because she didn’t like us eating in the living room.
Always, Mila and Papi would eat first, and when they were done, they would call us into the kitchen so that we could eat. I didn’t know why they arranged it like that, but it made me feel bad that we couldn’t have dinner together, as a family. I thought of that, and the new doorknob Papi had installed on their bedroom door, and I wondered if he was trying to tell us something.
“You’re going to have to eat, Nena,” Mago said as she slurped down her spaghetti. “Papi will get angry if you don’t.”
“It’s pretty good,” Carlos said as he raised a strand of spaghetti over his mouth and then sucked it in really fast, making the strand wiggle as it went into his mouth.
I looked back at the spaghetti and the red sauce. I thought of Pablo again and the surgery he had to get the worms removed. I thought of the scar like a crawling centipede and I just couldn’t bring myself to grab my fork and eat.
Papi came out of the bedroom to grab a beer, and noticing my full plate, asked me why I wasn’t eating.
“I’m not very hungry, Papi.”
“Well, Mila made this meal for you and now you’re going to have to eat it. I won’t have you being ungrateful.”
“I can’t eat it, Papi.”
Papi started to yell at me, and pretty soon I felt tears sliding down my cheeks because I didn’t know how to tell him about Pablo. I kept my eyes on the floor while Papi called me an ingrata, and how could I be so willing to throw away food that he had worked so hard to buy?
Mago said, “The spaghetti reminds her of lombrices, Papi.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Now, eat it!”
I forced myself to grab my fork, but I knew, as I twirled the spaghetti around, that I wouldn’t be able to bring it to my mouth, no matter what. I put the fork down and said, “I can’t, Papi. Please, don’t make me.”
Papi picked up my plate, and I thought he was going to take it away, but the next thing I knew he dumped the spaghetti on my head. I started screaming as the spaghetti slid down my face and over my eyes. All I saw inside my mind was Pablo’s belly exploding, and the worms coming to get me.
Mago and Carlos didn’t move. They sat there staring at me with pity, and I wished they would look away. I wished I could get up and run all the way back to Iguala, back to my grandmother’s arms. I wished, for the first time, that I were back in Mexico and back to being a little orphan. I wanted to be like Cristal, beautiful and loved by a handsome rich man who would take me away from here.
Papi went back into his room with his beer, and while Mago helped me clean up in the bathroom, Mila made me scrambled eggs, even though I told her I wasn’t hungry. Now I would have to eat the eggs because Papi would beat me for sure if I didn’t eat Mila’s food for the second time that night. As I showered, I cried and thought about my sweet grandmother. She would never have dumped a plate of food on my head. And I wouldn’t have had to tell her why I couldn’t eat the spaghetti. She would have known why right away. I thought about the Man Behind the Glass. He, too, wouldn’t have dumped the spaghetti on my head because he was with me all those years, and he had listened to me tell him about my fears and my dreams. But the father in this house didn’t know me. He didn’t know me at all.
And I didn’t know him.
5
Papi on Christmas
AFTER HAVING LIMITED access to a television all our lives, Mago, Carlos, and I couldn’t get enough of it now. Even though we couldn’t understand English very well, we loved to watch He-Man, ThunderCats, Transformers, Beverly Hills Teens, and Jem. For a minute we’d also owned an Atari. One of Papi’s tenants had given it to us after she bought her son a Nintendo, but then Mila took it away and gave it to her own children without even telling us. I missed playing Frogger.
One day, while we were watching ThunderCats, Santa Claus appeared on the screen during one of the commercial breaks. Christmas was three weeks away, and we were worried because we didn’t have any money to get Papi a present. He would only give us a dollar once in a while. As soon as we got it, we would run down to Barney’s Liquors and Market on Monte Vista Street and buy Now and Laters. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, Papi would give us a dollar each, and we would pool our money and buy a ham and cheese sandwich from Fidel’s Pizza on Avenue 50.
Santa Claus said something I couldn’t quite understand. But a telephone number flashed on the screen.
Mago rushed to the rotary phone.
“What are you doing?” Carlos said.
“I’m calling Santa.”
“I thought Santa doesn’t exist,” Carlos said.
“What do you mean he doesn’t exist?” I asked. “Don’t you see him there on the TV?”
Mago punched Carlos on the arm. “This is the United States, pendejo. Everything exists here.”
Mago dialed the number and called Santa. She frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Carlos said.
“It’s in English,” Mago said.
“Doesn’t Santa speak Spanish?” I asked.
“Shh,” Mago said. She listened intently, her eyebrows pulling together as she concentrated. Then she smiled.
“Is it really Santa?” I asked.
“It must be,” Mago said, covering the receiver. “He’s talking too fast. All I could make out was ‘Ho, ho, ho.’ So it must be him, right?” Then s
he motioned for me to be quiet and got back on the line. “Alo? Santa Clos? I want Barbie. I want bike. Please. Me good girl. Tank you.” She gave the phone to Carlos.
“Alo? Alo?” Carlos said, smiling his crooked smile. “A Nintendo. A Nintendo to me. Please.”
“My turn, my turn!” I said, jumping excitedly. Wait, but I don’t know how to say “skates” in English! I turned to Mago and asked her. Carlos gave me the phone, and I clutched it tight in my hands. “Come on, he’s going to hang up!”
Mago kept thinking. Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t know, Nena.”
Frustrated, I put the phone to my ear. “Alo? Santa Clos? Yo quiero patines, por favor. Mándeme unos patines para Navidad. Tank you.” Mago took the phone away and hung up. “Do you think he understood what I said?” I asked them.
“He’s Santa Claus. I don’t see why not,” Mago said. “Don’t worry, Nena.”
We turned back to the TV, but I was no longer interested in ThunderCats. I thought about my skates. In Iguala nobody I knew had skates. You can’t skate on dirt roads. But here, oh, this was the perfect place to own skates! But now I’d ruined my chance of getting them because I was sure Santa Claus hadn’t understood a word I’d said.
“I can’t believe you asked for a Barbie,” Carlos teased Mago. She punched him in the arm but didn’t say anything. Instead, bougainvillea blossomed on her cheeks. I knew why she had done it. When Papi bought me my Barbie, Mago wanted one also, but Papi said she was too old. What my father hadn’t understood was that we had never owned a Barbie. So what do you do when all your life you have yearned for such a thing?