I noticed she looked even thinner. Her hair usually covered up her shoulders, but they seemed to be jutting out more than usual. “Are you hungry?” I asked.
Her eyes looked tired. “Yeah, I haven’t been home in a few days.”
“Is your mother worried?” I asked, giving her a plate of leftover fajitas.
“Nope. I don’t think she even knew I was gone. You’re lucky with your mother—how she’s always looking out for you.”
Mama was trying hard, but lots of times I felt very alone.
“When I’m seventeen, I’m out of this neighborhood. I still got a chance of being something more than this, so maybe I’ll join the military.”
“Where’s your father?” I asked. “Could he help out?” I thought about how Papa was so much of my life, even in his absence.
“Nope. Gone.” She said it like he never existed.
“So what are you going to do?” I asked.
“What am I supposed to do? Crafts at the Boys and Girls Club? I got the pool and I got a bed. Occasionally, I got the library when things go really bad.”
I looked at her hands. “You painted your nails,” I said.
Her eyes brightened as she opened her green backpack. “Yeah, I got like six bottles of polish. The lady was throwing them away because they were expired. How can nail polish go bad?”
I shrugged my shoulders, but stared at the glossy pink with sparkles.
“You want me to paint yours?” Flora said between hasty bites of fajitas.
“I’ve never had my fingernails painted. Could you do it in the pink?”
She held my hand so that my fingers dangled. I noticed the beginnings of a star tattoo between her thumb and first finger. “What’s that?” I asked.
She grabbed my other hand and began painting my nails. “Something I ain’t gonna finish.”
If it was possible, the days grew hotter. The blue water of the pool looked like a heavy soup with people of every color splashing in and out.
Flora sat under the trees, looking hollow until the stand would empty of customers. She would come over and repaint my nails or braid my hair. I would do the same for her. I fed her the old sandwiches we usually threw away while we painted and repainted our toes with the nail polish. We talked, but never about the things we really wanted to say.
I questioned more workers as they came to the stand. “Do you know an Arturo Mirales? He works construction.”
No one knew my papa. It seemed we were doing more working than looking. I missed Grandma terribly. I didn’t talk to Flora about that, either.
Even my dreams felt tired and humid. How could I have a quinceañera if I felt a thousand years old?
I needed to make something happen instead of waiting for the information to float into Quitman Park. At the apartment, I sat on the stoop, thinking of what life could be if I just had an education.
Mama walked up the sidewalk and sat down next to me. “Where has your friend, the little black girl, gone?”
I sighed. “She went to Vacation Bible School. She wanted me to come with her, but I said I had to work.”
“You didn’t tell her anything, did you?” asked Mama with concern.
“What would I tell her? She’s not going to call la migra.” I felt my hands go up to my hair to try to comb out the tangles.
“I hear the other girl is a troublemaker,” said Mama, jingling coins in her pocket.
I paused, curling my fingers under my legs. “Not true,” I said. I gave Flora a little bit of free food, but I didn’t consider feeding the poor anywhere close to stealing.
“Just remember, you can’t feed every beggar.” Mama ruffled my hair. “I got a phone number today from someone who really described Papa.”
“What are we sitting here for? Let’s go!” I said. We ran down to the market where we would wait in line with the others to use the public phone.
Even though it was hot outside, I was shivering. Maybe this would be the day we would hear Papa’s voice.
I thought about the day of my first communion and how I stood on Papa’s shoes during a dance in the town square. The lights twinkled, and I felt like a princess. Papa whispered in my ear, “You will always be my perfect little girl.” I remembered how Mama glowed watching us, her hands cupping the light bump of her belly—my future sister.
But Mama miscarried. Sadness moved into the orchard and gobbled up whatever we had left until Papa had to leave for Texas.
I didn’t want to be a victim anymore. I wanted to be in charge of my life. I realized I hadn’t heard the voice in my head in a long time. Was that a good or bad thing? I stared at the jewelry store across the street.
The telephone booth ate our coins hungrily. I pressed my ear against the receiver to listen as Mama spoke.
“Buenas tardes. My name is Aurora. I am looking for my husband, Arturo. He is a worker from Cedula, Mexico. Do you know him? Is he there?” asked Mama.
“We haven’t seen him in a while. Sorry,” said the voice.
Mama hung up the phone.
No one had seen him.
I hate the telephone.
CHAPTER 28
Metro
The sound of distant bells haunted me. Flora hadn’t come by in a week, and I was worried. Perhaps I could light a candle for her and Papa today. “Can we go to Mass?”
Mama rubbed her neck and stretched her fingers. “I’m still tired, maybe we should rest more.” She was still sniffling from the phone call on Saturday night.
Every morning I had been doing errands for Jorge, I explored a little farther into our neighborhood.
“But I wanted to show you a shoe store across the street from the market. The church is on the way and we haven’t been to confession in years. It’s time to go. It would make Grandma happy,” I said to Mama.
I also worried that no one would show up with food for Mr. Mann. Someone needed to feed that crazy man.
“Nora, we don’t have money or time for any of that. No shoes. No clothing. No confession,” answered Mama.
I wiggled my toes so that they seemed extra long in my brown huaraches. “I need new sandals. I wanted to light a candle for Papa.”
What I really wanted was that calm feeling in a quiet place. Not the muffled voices of a television I couldn’t watch blaring from a wall.
“We have to do something. Let’s go downtown. To the tall buildings.” I put the postcard in my pocket in case we found Papa. I could show him how I carried it everywhere to think of him. “Maybe we could even stop by the shoe store? Payless. Isn’t that a pretty word?” Perhaps if I stood at the back door of Payless, someone would throw out a pair of expired shoes, just like the nail polish.
At the market, I bought the bus tokens and two doughnuts for Mr. Mann.
Mama was in the produce aisle holding a grapefruit. “These are no better than what we had in our orchard,” Mama said. “We could have sold our grapefruit here and none of this would have ever happened.”
I hugged her. “But now we know, and we can tell Grandma to send all of our grapefruit right here to this market.”
I crossed the street to Mr. Mann. When I put out the bag, he crumpled his eyebrows. “Jorge doesn’t make donuts.”
“I know,” I replied. “M-A-N-N.”
A small smile creased into the filth on his face. “Thanks, Tessa.” I had found that when you spelled his name it made him happy.
Bus 212 arrived. We sat in the center of the bus as it rumbled down the street. I watched the streets roll by. We crossed under a huge highway and the tall buildings sprang to life in the front window. They shone in the morning sunlight and almost looked like tall soldiers with gleaming badges of mirrored windows.
“Let’s get off here,” I said. “Maybe we can find a construction site.”
The buildings stretched to the sky in front of us. I bent my head all the way back just to see the top. The buildings shaded the sun and the concrete sweltered around us.
I imagined that during
the week women in fancy suits wore high heels, making them as tall as the men. Men wore suits and ties in dark colors and shined shoes. Perfume, lipstick, briefcases.
Maybe one day, I could be one of these people. When I was better educated. When I had shoes that fit.
“We need to find Canal Street. That’s where men go to look for work,” I said.
“How did you find out about Canal Street?” asked Mama.
“I asked, and all the men say that’s the place to go.”
The buildings began to fade, and soon there were no more fancy shops, and I couldn’t read the signs. We walked under a large freeway.
Across an empty lot, several groups of men stood alongside the road. I squinted to see the name on the sign: CANAL.
In Spanish, canal means a big place of water. It can also mean a trough. I didn’t know what it meant in English. It looked like a dead end.
“This is the street. Let’s go talk to some people,” I suggested.
A truck stopped at the corner, and suddenly all of the groups burst into action, screaming at the truck.
“I’ve got a team of eight! Ten dollars an hour!”
“His team is all drunk. Choose us. Nine dollars an hour.”
One man pushed the other, and soon they fought in the dirt.
Three other men approached the truck. Mama and I looked through the crowd for Papa. I couldn’t see him anywhere.
A white man in a cowboy hat stuck his head out of the pickup truck. “I need ten men. The first ten into the truck come with me. I only need diggers today.”
The men poured in, each scrambling for a seat in the back. The smallest one was pushed off to the side so that an older man could get on. He threw a clod of dirt.
All of this happened in less than a minute. Mama grabbed my hand. “He’s not there. Let’s go.”
“Someone has to know him,” I said with a strangle in my voice. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and tingled. Grandma said tingles were a sign of bad things. She always told me to be aware of the signs. I looked up. No birds.
Men sauntered back to the shade and pulled out brown bags.
“¡Hola, mami!” one of the men shouted. It wasn’t a compliment.
Mama stopped in her tracks, flinching.
“Let’s go,” she pleaded under her breath. “He’s not here. Papa wouldn’t want us to be here.”
“¿Cuanto?” screamed another man.
How much? Why was this man asking “how much”? Mama began to step backward.
“Has anyone seen Arturo Mirales from Cedula, Mexico?” I yelled from our spot across the lot. I wasn’t leaving without information.
“I’ve got something for you to see.” The man pointed at his pants. Mama’s nails dug into my palm.
“Arturo Mirales from Cedula, Mexico. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. We need to find him.” I tried to sound as adult as possible. Pretend it’s easy until it is.
“Come here and I’ll give you something.” I could smell the alcohol from across the parking lot.
We turned and ran.
“I think we should go home now,” said Mama with a sigh.
We were finally at the bus stop. “It won’t be long. At least the bus will be air-conditioned.”
“No, I mean home to Mexico. Home,” she said softly.
“We can’t. Not without Papa.”
“But maybe he’s already on his way. Maybe he’s at home waiting for us,” Mama said in an unsure voice.
“We’ll find him!” I screamed, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. “We’re here, and we’re staying. We just need to try harder.”
Mama shook her head. “But what else can we do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But Papa promised me we would be together.”
Mama wiped another tear from her eye. “Mija, I know….”
“No! A promise is a promise. We’re staying.”
I could go to school. I could have friends and a real life. It was a plan.
We boarded the bus and sat on opposite sides of the aisle all the way back to Quitman Street.
The bus finally squeaked to a stop. The squealing brakes reminded me of the creaking branches from our orchard.
Mr. Mann sat on his corner, face frozen and shoulders hunched. What was his plan? Is that what happened when everything went wrong?
Where was God for him?
Or for us?
CHAPTER 29
No More
Late in the afternoon, Keisha appeared with a pair of plastic shoes that matched hers. “Hey, guess what! I made these for you; now we can be shoe twins.”
They were purple sandals with sparkles and pompoms glued to the plastic thong. Ugly and horrible, they fit perfectly. I grabbed her tightly. “Thank you, my shoe twin.”
Keisha loved to correct my accent. “Not ‘chew,’ ‘sh-ewww.’ These are called flip-flops, but I don’t know how to say that in Mexican,” she said playfully. “I made these in VBS. This is a prototype. That’s a fancy word for the first kind of shoe you make. I’m gonna practice making more with a hot-glue gun and stuff I got from the craft store with these coupons. But we can’t wear these to school, because I don’t want anyone to steal my idea before I can get on one of those TV design shows.”
“School?” I asked. My mind ran fast to catch up with her words.
“I can’t believe that we have to go back to school so soon. This year we have to have a uniform. We get vouchers.”
“Voucher.” It came out sounding like “boucher.”
“Yeah, most of us around here get vouchers ’cause none of us can afford that kind of stuff. Now that I think about it, I bet you gonna get a voucher. You gotta get some kicks for gym class. You can’t go around barefoot, and no flip-flops at school.”
Keisha had a way of pointing out the painfully obvious. “I wouldn’t even be going to schools in this neighborhood except for my mom works here. She prefers we stay—you know, in other places.”
“Where live?” I asked.
“We live over on the other side of I-10. Houston freeways are a big belt, keeping us all cinched up in different parts of its body. Nobody wants their belly touching their butt.”
I didn’t exactly understand, but I let Keisha talk. “I’ll be at the high school in two years. Do you think we’ll still be friends then? I bet they figure out your English ain’t the best and take you to ESL.”
“School is where?”
“Aren’t you registered? Now, which grade are you in?”
The conversation grew more intense. How was I to explain that I didn’t know what grade I should be in? She asked that question a lot. Usually I pretended I didn’t understand.
“ESL?” How long would it take for her to figure out my game? I felt like I could trust her, but Mama told me never to tell about our status.
“You know, so that you can learn English. English as a Second Language. I bet you were in that class last year but you didn’t know it. That’s why it’s so important that I do this design stuff. I can’t spend my life being a dummy. You neither.”
If Keisha had confidence about getting ahead in the world, I could too.
Keisha jumped off the side of the pool and kicked her legs up in the air to make a big splash. Just then, a girl in short shorts with a massive tattoo on her leg got soaked from the wave.
“¡Eres majadero! ¡Idiota!” Water drenched her tight white shirt. She made such a scene, everyone turned their head. “¡Moreno!”
“Sorry, I didn’t see you.” Keisha’s brave behavior shrank in the shadow of the shrieking girl.
“You shouldn’t even be at this pool!”
“I said I’m sorry.” Hurt spread across Keisha’s face.
“Stop,” I called to the shrieking girl. I felt myself pulling up to the ledge so I could look her in the eye. Her heavy makeup stained her eyes. Was this the girl who pushed me on the first day? She had a star tattoo—the kind that wasn’t finished on Flora’s hand.
&n
bsp; “What did you say to me?” She took a step closer to me with her fists clenched.
I was not a victim.
I climbed out of the water and straightened my shoulders and stood toe-to-toe with her. “Stop it. Stop!” I took another step, and she stumbled backward into the grass. Anger pushed me forward.
Keisha yelled at me from the water. “No! Not one of the Chulo girls!”
My insides felt like exploding. Someone had to stand up. Someone had to do something. Keisha had protected me before, and now it was my turn to stand up for her.
I felt the words hissing out of my mouth. “I want better! ¡No mas!” Anger welled inside my fists until I couldn’t control them any longer. As she lunged at me, I pulled back and punched her hard in the mouth.
Lauren blew her whistle from the chair. Jorge came barging toward the pool.
Blood smeared across my hand. The Chulo girl pounced like a cat, but I moved and she hit the concrete. I kicked with my bare feet and grabbed at her gelled hair. Her neck pulled taut, but she was no match for my fury.
I heard Flora scream from the fence. “Leave Nora alone. She’s with me!”
I pulled at the girl’s hair while she screamed. I dragged her to the edge and pushed her into the pool.
“No, Tessa! No!” Jorge screamed, jerking me back by my arm.
The wet girl stared at Keisha, and then took a long look at me. I crossed my arms and cocked my head.
I glared back at Jorge. “I’m not Tessa!” Grandma always said to choose your fights. I had chosen mine.
The girl climbed out of the pool with her hand pressed up against her lip. She flipped a middle finger at me and jerked her body at mine, a threat to continue to fight.
Flora rushed to my side. “Are you okay? I’ll get this taken care of.”
Jorge pulled harder on my arm. “Get back to the stand!”
“Where have you been?” I asked Flora harshly.
Keisha stood wide-eyed. “You have got to be careful with those people.”
Jorge yelled at Flora, “And stay away from us! You are nothing but trouble.”
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