by Anne Schraff
Manny left for a place called “Father Joe’s Village,” where they fed thousands of the homeless. They took in teenagers and provided an education. They offered medical and dental care. There was little they didn’t do for the desperate, the poor, the abused. Orlando breathed a sigh of relief that Manny would be okay until he came for him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Ernesto and Naomi delivered Orlando to the bus that would take Oscar Perez and the rest of the band back to Los Angeles. They had a gig tomorrow night in Canoga Park.
They’d found Manny and gotten him to a safe place in only twenty-five minutes. They all decided to celebrate with a frozen yogurt. Seated at a booth at the yogurt shop, their mood was joyous.
“You have no idea how much Mama misses you, Orlando,” Naomi remarked over her frozen strawberry yogurt. “I remember being thirteen and coming home from my girlfriend’s house. You were gone. I don’t even know exactly why.”
“Mama never told you the details?” Orlando asked. Then he shrugged. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“She said you and Dad had an argument and you hit him,” Naomi explained.
“Yeah,” Orlando acknowledged. “And Mama chose the old diablo over me. That’s what she did. He was on her case that night. I’d just come home from school, and he was drinking as usual. He slapped her—slapped her hard—and she fell backwards into the sofa. It was too much for me.”
“Dad slapped Mama?” Naomi asked. “I never saw that . . .”
“You see what you want to see, mi hermana,” he chided her. “They call it denial. Anyway, I went after him. He was dumbfounded. He said he would teach me to respect my father. .. mi padre! What a sick joke that I would learn respect from him. I punched him good. Yeah, I did. He hit the floor. He ordered me from the house then. He said if I came back, he’d call the cops.”
Orlando reflected for a moment. “Mom, she sat there cryin’. She’s good at that. She’s had a lot of practice. I had fifty dollars in my pocket and two more weeks of high school. I had no job, nothing. I hung out with a cousin ’till I graduated. Mama and the old man, they didn’t even come to the graduation. You know what Mama did when he threw me and all my stuff out? Nada. That’s what she did. She chose him over me.”
“Orlando, I was thirteen and Zack was fourteen,” Naomi protested. “What was she going to do? Manny was sixteen. Mama never had a job. She never paid a bill. He does everything. He’s always provided for us. What was she going to do?”
“We could have all gone to a shelter,” Orlando insisted. “She could have divorced him and made him pay support. It’s not right to live like that, Naomi. It’s not right for a man to put down and ridicule and abuse a woman like that, year after year. It made me sick to my stomach how he would give her digs every day. She didn’t clean the house good enough. She was a lousy cook. She was a fool.”
Orlando was working up a rage. “He beat her down with his words until she became smaller and smaller, and weaker and weaker. Finally, I guess she just believed all the bad things he said about her. Dad, he’s a big talker, talks all the time about what he’s interested in. Mama would say a few words. And he’d yell at her, ‘Don’t you ever shut up, woman?’I could see Mama fading before my eyes. And that made me so angry I had begun to hate this man who was my father.”
There were tears in Naomi’s eyes. “I know Dad is mean to Mom a lot . . . but . . . but she loves him. And in his way he loves her . . .”
“Love?” Orlando almost screamed. “Such love is a sickness!” He leaned forward, looking right at his sister, with something almost menacing in his eyes. “Naomi, this boy here, Ernesto Sandoval, is he your boyfriend?” he asked.
Naomi glanced at Ernesto and answered, “He’s a dear friend.”
“Listen to me, muchacha,” Orlando commanded. “If this is not your boyfriend, you find one like him. You keep looking until you find such a boy. If I ever find out you are with a boy who is like our father, I will come and drag you from him. And if I ever hear a boy has treated you like the old diablo has treated our mama, I will destroy him!”
Ernesto concentrated on his frozen chocolate yogurt. He could see that Naomi was deeply shaken, but she said nothing.
Later, right before Orlando got out of the Volvo for the bus, Naomi asked him, “Would it be okay if I told Mama about meeting you and Manny, Orlando?”
“Sure,” Orlando agreed. “You tell her that I love her. She is always in my heart. She is mi madre. Sometime maybe I can see her. But not in his house.” Orlando reached in his pocket for a card. It bore his name and cell phone number. “Tell Mama to call me. If we can arrange to meet somewhere later on, I’ll buy a nice dinner for everybody. I’ll give my mama all the hugs we have missed out on.” He had smiled a little before, but now he grinned widely, “It would make me happy for us to be together.”
Then, as suddenly as the warm smile came, it vanished into a bitter frown. “But she won’t call me. She’d be afraid if he knew he would be angry. She will not call and agree to meet. She cannot do anything for someone he disapproves of. This is how she lives her life. No human being should live their life cowering in fear of someone else. But this is how she does.”
The yogurts were finished, and so was the conversation.
“Hey man,” Ernesto said, “I gotta get to work.”
Ernesto dropped Orlando off at the school lot. When Naomi and Ernesto were alone in the car going home, Naomi sighed. “It was so wonderful to see my brothers, but I feel so sad and strange. I’m glad somebody is going to help Manny. That’s a good thing.”
“Naomi, are you going to tell your mom about today?” Ernesto asked.
“Yes,” Naomi stated. “I’m going to ask her to call Orlando. I know how much it would mean to her to see her boys. She mourns them as if they were dead. Orlando went hard on Mama tonight. He doesn’t understand.”
“Do you think your father would ever forgive Orlando for what happened?” Ernesto asked.
“Maybe,” Naomi guessed, “if Orlando asked for forgiveness. In my father’s world, a son must never strike his father.”
“I don’t think Orlando has it in him to ask for forgiveness for defending his mother,” Ernesto commented. “I don’t think a man should have to ask forgiveness for doing the right thing.”
Naomi said nothing for a moment and then spoke. “Ernie, you don’t understand. Your family is so different. Your father is a very special man. You’re lucky, Ernie. Most of us don’t get fathers like Luis Sandoval. When he stands before the class in history, I just admire him so much. He’s such a good man, so dedicated. He is well educated and soft-spoken. Having a father like that makes it hard for you to understand other men, Ernie.”
She seemed close to tears again. “There are not so many men in this world like Luis Sandoval. My dad isn’t perfect. I know that. I don’t like the way he talks to Mom, but he does love her. Two years ago, Mama had serious surgery, and she was in the hospital for five days. He stayed there the whole time. For hours he sat at her bedside. I saw him weeping. He loves her. He cares for her. I know he’s unkind sometimes, and I hate that, but he buys her nice stuff. If she sees some new gadget on TV, it’s in the house by the weekend. Dad loves her, and he loves me and Zack. He even loves Orlando and Manny. But he’s so embittered by what happened that he hides his feelings. He’s a difficult man, Ernie, but he’s always taken care of us. And he’s never been unfaithful to my mother. He’s my father and. .. I love him.”
“I know you love your father, Naomi. That’s only natural,” Ernesto said gently.
“Sometimes good people do bad things, Ernie,” Naomi continued, “but that doesn’t mean that deep down they aren’t good. When I was little, my father would take me to the park to go on the slides and swings. I remember one time there was a cold rain, and I didn’t have a heavy coat. So he took off his and gave it to me. He caught a nasty cold, but he said that was okay because it was better than me getting sick.”
Ernesto wasn�
��t exactly sure whom Naomi was talking about, her father or Clay Aguirre. Was she trying to justify her father’s bad behavior? Was she trying to rationalize getting back with Clay Aguirre? Like her father, Clay too had deeply buried good qualities that were worth looking for.
When Ernesto dropped off Naomi, they exchanged only simple good-byes.
He was a few minutes late for work. But he apologized to his boss and got right to work.
At school on Tuesday, Ernesto noticed that Yvette Ozono was wearing a beautiful lilac-colored pullover, similar to the sweaters Naomi wore. Usually Yvette showed up at school in out-of-date, often threadbare clothing. Her mother was struggling to provide for three children on minimum-wage jobs cleaning office buildings. There was no money for nice clothing for the children. Yvette was very slim, about Naomi’s size, and Ernesto suspected that maybe Naomi had given her some of her pullovers. Naomi would do something like that. She would convince Yvette that she was overwearing a certain sweater and was about to donate it to the thrift store unless Yvette wanted it. The truth was that Naomi was always at the mall getting the latest fashions.
“Hey Yvette,” Ernesto commented. “You look great in that color.”
Yvette smiled. She was a really beautiful girl, but most of the time in the past she looked drab and sad. Now her new sweater matched the light in her eyes. “Oh, thanks, Ernie. I love this pullover,” she responded. “I could never buy one like this, but Naomi was cleaning out her closet. She said she was bored with some of her stuff, and did I want something? Isn’t that cool?”
“It fits you great,” Ernesto said.
“Yeah, and I got two others,” Yvette beamed. “Naomi is the nicest girl I ever met. I’m so lucky to have a friend like her.”
“She is nice,” Ernesto agreed. Naomi was as kindhearted as she was beautiful. That’s what made her so appealing to Ernesto. Most girls with her figure and her looks would be stuck-up. But she lived her life as if she didn’t know how lovely she really was. That’s why Ernesto was willing to risk Clay Aguirre’s wrath to get close to her, why he was willing to be patient.
“You know Ernie,” Yvette went on, “if she’s not pushing Tessie in her wheelchair, she’s making sure there’s enough food in the homeless shelter Chavez High is supporting. I love it here at Chavez, Ernie. I’m so happy your dad came to my place and nagged me to come back to school. After I dropped out, I was just stuck in that bad neighborhood with a bunch of losers.”
Just then Dom Reynosa came along. He looked at Yvette and grinned. “Hey, get movin’, girl. We’re gonna be late for Cabral’s class if we don’t hurry. You know what he does to kids who come in late. He makes them sit in that tiny chair up front that he got from a day care center!”
Ernesto blinked. José Cabral was one of the new young teachers hired at Cesar Chavez High. He was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A local boy, he returned to the barrio after his excellent education to pass it along to other kids. Ernesto didn’t have him, but the word around school was that he was electrifying.
“You in Cabral’s class, Yvette?” Ernesto asked in surprise.
Yvette giggled. Ernesto had never heard her giggle before. “Yeah, and Mr. Cabral put me and Dom in the geek squad. He said we were two of his top students.”
“Wow Yvette!” Ernesto cried. “And Dom too? That’s really awesome. I wish I was that good in math.”
Dom shrugged, “I always liked math. The other classes bore me. But now I understand I gotta put up with stupid English stories and stuff about the ancient Romans, just so I can get my math in. This guy, Cabral, he does all kinds of neat stuff in class. It’s like going to a sci-fi movie sometimes.”
As they walked along, Yvette spoke. “My mom never thought I was smart. I got good grades in math in school. But she always said I’d slip when I got into really hard stuff like algebra and trig. To me, though, it seems to get easier, not harder. Mr. Cabral has a poster in his classroom. It has a picture of that famous Bolivian teacher, Jaime Escalante. It says, ‘Calculus need not be made easy. It is easy already.’”
Dom and Yvette headed into Mr. Cabral’s room. Ernesto noticed Dom slipping an arm around the girl’s shoulders, and Ernesto smiled. Ernesto thought to himself that neither kid, Dom nor Yvette, would be in that classroom—and doing great work—if it were not for Luis Sandoval. Ernesto was so proud of his father.
At the end of the school day, Ernesto worked up enough courage to ask Naomi to come to Sunday dinner at his house. It wouldn’t be like a real date, but it might just lead to a real date. It would be just a friend asking another friend over to dinner.
“My grandmother, Abuela Lena,” Ernesto began, “she loves cooking, and she pushes Mom out of the kitchen half the time. When Abuela moved in with us, we thought she was going to be sitting around not doing much, but she’s come to life. Over at Tía Magda’s house she spent most of the time watching TV. I guess they discouraged her from doing stuff, but Mom lets her shine. Well, anyway, she’s making one of her specialties on Sunday, and she asked me if you could come, Naomi. I’ve told her a lot about you and she’d like to meet you.”
Naomi smiled. “Well, I sure wouldn’t want to disappoint your grandmother!”
“Then you can come? We have dinner around one,” Ernesto said.
“Okay,” Naomi promised. “Bluebird Street is just a block from Wren, so I’ll come strolling over, Ernie.”
Ernesto was feeling optimistic again. He was making a little progress. He made up his mind that he wouldn’t bring up anything unpleasant at the dinner table. No problems. Nothing about Orlando or Manny. It would just be a happy family dinner, with Abuela having a chance to show off her cooking skills. For many years she cooked for her husband and their five children. Lena Sandoval was the best cook in the barrio; that was common knowledge. Hortencia gained her marvelous tamale-making skills at her mother’s side.
Late that Sunday morning, Abuela was busy in the kitchen. She had done much of the work the night before, putting pineapple juice, lime juice, white vinegar, cloves, dried oregano, ground pepper, minced chili pepper, and vegetable oil in a Ziploc bag. She added chicken pieces, put the concoction in the refrigerator, and marinated it all night. Now Abuela was grilling the chicken, and heavenly aromas filled the Sandoval house and floated down the street.
“Mama,” Ernesto’s mother noted, “that smells so good!” She glanced at Ernesto, “Naomi will love it.”
Naomi came walking over at quarter to one, and everybody gathered in the dining room. As she always did, Abuela led the blessing.
“Oooooo,” Juanita cried, “I’m so glad you came to live with us, Abuela!” She had “pretasted” the chicken.
Ernesto’s mother laughed. “So much for my cooking, but never mind. I write books about pit bulls!”
“You’re a wonderful cook, Maria,” Abuela stated loyally. She liked all the spouses of her children, but she had a special affection for Maria Sandoval. Ernesto often thought his dad’s mom loved his mother more than mom’s mom loved his dad.
“Yes Maria,” Dad concurred, “you are a splendid cook.”
It was not lost on Naomi how everybody came together to make Maria Sandoval feel special. Nobody wanted her to feel slighted. Ernesto noted a faint sadness in Naomi’s eyes. Her father always criticized his wife’s cooking, and Zack just laughed. Naomi felt guilty about keeping quiet when Dad was unkind. Naomi thought her own mother was a very good cook but received scant credit.
“Dad,” Ernesto announced, “I caught something at school the other day that just blew my mind. Maybe you already know it, but I was amazed. Yvette Ozono and Dom Reynosa are in Mr. Cabral’s math class, and they’re doing great. They’re in the geek squad as top students.”
Dad grinned. “Isn’t that something?” he beamed.
“Dad,” Ernesto went on, “neither one of them would be in school if you hadn’t reached out to them.”
“Well,” Dad demurred, “if there’s something I can
do to help kids along, I should. These kids who’re good in math, they’re the hope of America’s technical future.”
Then he switched the focus off himself. “José Cabral is just in his twenties, you know, and what a cool, bright guy. He gets this scholarship to go to MIT and graduates with honors, turns down excellent job offers on the East Coast, and comes back here to help the kids in the neighborhood where he grew up. Really an inspiring guy.”
Mom looked up then, pensive for a moment. Then she said, “I met his wife at our last faculty wives get-together. She’s some kind of genius too. She has a master’s degree, and she’s working for a high-tech company developing new gizmos I don’t even understand. We got to talking, you know. I mentioned to her how that chunk of concrete came through our living room window the other night and I was scared stiff. I was almost ready to get out of town . . .”
Ernesto was looking at his mother and listening intently. Dad was too.
“I asked her—Jennifer’s her name—if she was afraid of living around here with the gangs and all. I mean, her husband married her in Massachusetts, and they both could have stayed there getting good jobs. But she said it was her husband’s dream to come home and make a difference here. I asked her if her husband was afraid to ask her to make such a sacrifice. She said the sweetest thing. She said, ‘Jose and I love each other. I want his dreams to come true as much as he does. If his life is here, then my life is here. With love there is no fear.’”
CHAPTER SIX
After Sunday dinner, Ernesto and Naomi walked back to her house. “Your grandmother is a wonderful cook and a doll,” Naomi remarked. “I really enjoyed that dinner. Thanks for inviting me, Ernie.”
“Anytime,” Ernesto said. He wanted to reach out and put his arm around her lovely, soft shoulders, as Dom did with Yvette. He wanted to touch her velvet skin and feel his fingertips tingle. But he didn’t dare. Not yet. She always described him as a good friend, never using the term he longed to hear: “boyfriend.”