Jubilee

by Jennifer Givhan

  Selena blasted from the stereo in the backyard. Gabe’s rusted ’66 Mustang hulked on a frayed patch of grass against the fence, covered with a tarp. Hector had promised to help his son restore it years before. But between them, most things remained unsaid or unfinished.

  On the patio, carne asada sizzled on the grill with whole green onions—bulbs and all—habanero chiles, thick flour tortillas. Hector, a skewer in one hand, cerveza in the other, was a John Deere of a man, over six feet and three hundred pounds. When Hector found Gabe and Bianca in Gabe’s bed when they were fifteen and seventeen, sheets pulled over her naked body up to her neck, he shouted in a growl deeper than her own dad’s yelling, drunk and raging, “Never let me see her in this fucking bed again!” He slammed the door and drove away. Gabe had rubbed her thighs as she sobbed. “He’s like that. He’ll warm to you when we have our first baby.” He said it like he didn’t regret what they’d done. Regret: a metal scraping her mouth. She imagined what their baby would’ve looked like. Imagined herself growing beneath the tent of bedsheet into a carnival. Running away with her own damn self.

  Two years later, when she was seventeen, beneath a star-pitted sky during winter break, she and Gabe lay in the back of his pea-green truck. Gabe was crying. Across the dirt road, red and green chaser lights blinked Merry Christmas from a farmhouse in the distance. “You don’t understand,” he’d said. And she didn’t. It should have been simple: They loved each other. Wasn’t that enough? She was a senior in high school, he a freshman in college. He’d gone away to Cal State San Bernardino, three hours north toward the Inland Empire. The week after he’d left, Lily’s mom had driven a drunk and babbling Bee home from a house party, and Bee’s mama had rushed her to the ER where they’d pumped her stomach. Mama had grounded Bee for months; she would’ve allowed Gabe to come over, but he never did, not once did he come and see her like he’d promised, and Bee didn’t know why until mid-November. Bee had gone to the Cattle Call parade on Main Street with Lily, and when she saw Gabe there, his arms around another girl, she’d fallen off the curb where she’d been buying watermelon with chile from a street vendor and sprained her ankle, but that pain didn’t compare with the sight of Gabe’s arm draped across another girl’s shoulders, watching the floats of school children and rodeo queens passing by with another girl in Bee’s place in the lawn chairs and blankets on the sidewalk beside his familia. Bee hadn’t even planned on going; Gabe must have thought she wouldn’t be there. She hadn’t confronted him then. She’d been too ashamed. She’d left her fruit cup and limped back to her dad’s car. They broke up over the phone, and she ignored his calls for the next month. She’d found out through the small-town chisme that the other girl’s name was Katrina, and she went to San Bernardino with Gabe, though she was from the Valley, también.

  Still, when Gabe had returned for winter break, he’d stopped by her house first to wish her a Merry Christmas, but they’d ended up driving out to the country between ditch banks and haystacks, where she gave in, gave herself to him, and afterward, he told her that he still loved her and never should’ve let her go. She hadn’t gone anywhere, she’d said. They could still get back together. That other girl didn’t matter. It was over. What didn’t she understand?

  “Katrina’s pregnant.”

  The air had splintered, crackling like shards of ice. She’d sucked it in until her lungs ached.

  She should’ve walked away then. She’d tried. She’d thrown herself into the novels and poetry books she loved, signed up for an online, dual-credit college literature class and read Beloved for the first time, filled every page of every journal she could get her hands on, transcribing the prickling songs of the cacti in her mama’s garden, the troubled arrows of the penned horses’ eyes down at the stables beyond the empty lots beside the river, the texture and taste of the pomegranate seeds growing wild in the orchards behind her house, the Saturday-morning before-sunrise chatter of the sleepy migrant workers gathering in the doughnut shop, their yawning Spanish, their gnarled, calloused hands, as she ordered her bear claw and sweet tea, last meal before she finally dragged herself to sleep. Her dreams; she wrote those too.

  She’d earned scholarships to several California universities before she’d settled on Holy Cross. It was their music that had called to her. Their choir had put on a performance in the auditorium at school, and their haunted voices had spoken to the hole inside her. Of course, Mama had been thrilled.

  But there’s a hole in the belly of the earth. It swallows.

  And it flapped open its meaty jaws. Made a meal of her father.

  When Bianca had returned for the funeral, there was Gabe.

  Now, Esme took the bowl of shrimp cocktail and a tray of saltines out to the patio. Bianca followed with a bowl of homemade salsa, made the way Gabe’s nana had taught her. Blacken fat, green poblano chiles on the comal, “Pick them up fast or you’ll burn the tips of your fingers,” Nana had said, pinching her fingers together, snatching back her clasped hand and wincing, “¡Ay! How that stings.”

  “Bee,” Hector called playfully from the barbecue. Grinning, he nodded toward the bowl in her hands. “You didn’t make the salsa all soupy like the lasagna, did you? Remember, Esme? La sopa?” He meant the time she’d tried making lasagna for Gabe’s whole family, and Hector had barked, “¿Qué es estó? ¿Sopa?” They’d all laughed at her runny casserole, her tomato-red face.

  She forced a laugh. “Nah, Hector. I think I made it right this time. You’d better taste and make sure.” She had to hide her feelings. She couldn’t be too sentis. Unless she was drunk. And no one liked her when she was drunk.

  Gabe pulled his green truck onto the treads of dead grass his tires had rutted into his mother’s lawn, home from picking up two-year-old Lana from her mother, Katrina. She was a hurricane all right.

  Through the open gate Lana flung herself into Bianca’s arms. “Bee!”

  “Hey, pretty girl. Qué chula.” She picked Lana up, both smiling. But it also hurt, holding her. She wasn’t Bianca’s daughter. Though she could swear she saw a trace of her in there.

  “Wanna play?” Lana’s voice squeaked like a baby bird. Stuck them to the nesting place.

  Bianca carried Lana toward the patio, where Esme scooped her away.

  “Mi preciosa, mi princesa. Come to Nana.” Esme snatched her so quickly, her voice and expression changed so suddenly, Bianca went cold. Lana was Esme’s granddaughter. She was also a broken record in Bianca’s memory. The Valley had a way of beckoning back its children. Children having children.

  Clasping her arms across her chest, Bianca dug her nails into her skin as she watched Esme dance with her first and only granddaughter. Maybe Bianca shouldn’t have returned to the Valley when Dad died. Her second semester of freshman year, she’d packed up before midterms and never returned. Maybe she should have stayed at Holy Cross on the coast, stuck it out there, stifling and dogmatic as it had been. Now she was stuck here in the desert—the way she imagined Dad, purgatorial.

  Selena crooned the mariachi “Tú Solo Tú” in her husky voice.

  “Come here, son. Man this grill,” Hector called. With cerveza in hand, he marched over to Esme and grabbed her waist, pulling her to his gargantuan body and dancing her around the patio. “After twenty years with you, vieja, you’re still the only one.”

  Lana squirmed out of their arms and toddled toward Bianca. Gabe pulled a bottle of beer from the cooler and popped the cap off with his teeth, letting it fall to the ground. He swigged half the beer in one gulp, watching his parents dance.

  As the evening sun dipped behind the fence, the backyard barbecue had turned full swing. The rest of the familia, compadres, and comadres had arrived, parking their cars in the alley and funneling through the back gate carrying six-packs and paper bags of liquor. More food had been piled atop the plastic folding tables surrounding the wooden picnic bench, now mostly conchas and cakes, and people s
itting or standing nearby occasionally waved the flies away.

  Bianca had whisked away a pink concha before anyone else could and stuffed it in pieces between her cheeks as she helped Gabe put Lana to bed; the bright-pink pan dulce was her favorite, reminding her of girlhood holidays at her abuela’s house. Reminded her of sweet things, this sweet bread. Reminded her of innocence. She was spilling the crumbs onto Lana’s bedspread, but she didn’t care. Gabe lay on one side of the queen-sized bed and she the other, with Lana in the middle as they watched Strawberry Shortcake. And as the little girl between them closed her eyes, Bianca whispered, “Sometimes I wish she were mine.”

  Gabe sprawled across his daughter’s grand bed, a bed fit for a princess, his big feet hanging off the side, hands tucked behind his head. He closed his eyes briefly before answering. “I am sorry, Bee.”

  They’d spoken these words before.

  When they were sure the baby was asleep, they crept out of her bedroom. On the patio Gabe grabbed three more beers. He handed Bianca one, chugged one himself, then opened the next as he sat in a lawn chair near the picnic table. Everyone prattling and laughing, Bianca perched at the edge of a bench, sipping a beer. Hector would be more generous in front of his friends. This was their chance to ask him for the loan. But how to break into the senseless banter?

  Hector’s compadre Frank complained his marriage had gone to shit when his wife went back to work. Hector laughed. “She stop making your tortillas, compadre?”

  “You kidding? She never made tortillas. Even before that.”

  “Not like our mamis used to? Back in the good ol’ days.”

  “Not with all this feminist independence mierda.”

  “Bee’s a feminist. She’s a college girl. Es verdad, Bee?” Hector was drunk.

  Bianca nodded, though she was actually a dropout who’d soon be a college student again. After Dad’s funeral, she’d found a job taking classifieds at the local newspaper, the Desert Herald, which was closer to writing than cashiering at Savers. She’d signed up to start community college in the spring (since she’d missed the fall deadline). She would retake the classes she’d dropped, sans biblical history, swapping it for contemporary poetry. That counted as a college girl, right?

  “My daughter Adriana works at the bank,” Frank said. “What about you?”

  Bianca meant to say she worked at the Valley Press. But she’d been drinking and instead, she told him she was a writer.

  Hector held his beer across his heart. Gabe rolled his eyes.

  “A writer? So you don’t want babies?” Frank joked.

  Of course she wanted babies. That was her problem. She’d always wanted babies. Even when she’d let Esme and Gabe talk her into letting one go . . . for their future.

  She nodded.

  “I thought writers live alone, drink all day long, travel around Europe.”

  “I could take my kids with me to Europe. Or México.” She used her Spanish accent, which she’d perfected when she’d taught herself to speak Spanish. Mama hadn’t spoken Spanish to her or her gringo father. Another reason Bianca resented her.

  “She wants to write about our people?” Frank winked at Hector. “Una gringa por la causa.”

  “My mama is Mexican,” she said. If anyone heard her, they didn’t respond.

  “You’re mixed up, Bee. You’d better pick: writer or wife. Right, Frank?” Hector laughed.

  She chugged her beer, wiped her mouth, spoke up loudly. “All you do is sit around objectifying women as if we’re set in stone. You relegate us to roles you’ve assigned and bark orders at us: Mujer! Grab me a beer. Make me a plate. Go get the ice. Why don’t you get off your ass and get it yourself?” Her heart pounded. She couldn’t believe she’d stood up to Hector. She didn’t dare look at Gabe. They were supposed to be getting on Hector’s good side, not accusing him of being a machismo pig.

  But Hector laughed, then turned toward the grass behind him and spit. “Qué cabrona. Listen to this girl talk. What else, La Bee? Tell us more.”

  She knew he was making fun of her, but she didn’t care. She was burning inside and the only way to keep from imploding was to let it out. “You think we like serving men?”

  “Then why do you do it?” Hector demanded. “Why bring La Sopa over here?”

  She looked toward Gabe, who stared at the cement. “Love.”

  For a second she thought Gabe would say something. Instead, he slumped farther in his chair, cradling his beer, its glass spout nestled against his chin.

  “Ay, amor,” Hector said, pulling Esme closer to him. “Mujer de mi corazón, mi vida,” he sang. “Go get me a beer.” He slapped her ass.

  Everyone laughed. Bianca’s cheeks reddened again.

  “La Bee, you want your man to love you?”

  Gabe shifted in his lawn chair, cleared his throat, said nothing.

  “Keep that pot of beans hot. Right, son? That what you want?” Hector chuckled.

  “I want her to keep her mouth shut in public,” Gabe said.

  “Muchacho, the woman’s always right.” Hector turned to his wife, “That right, mujer?”

  “Mmm,” Esme murmured, smiling as her husband kissed her. “But leave pobre Bee alone, Hector.”

  “Nah, she can handle it.” He turned to Bianca. “So which is it then, Bee? Writer or wife? Your husband doesn’t want you airing his dirty laundry. His caca.”

  She told him she would split in two, break the binary.

  “There she goes with her fancy college words. Su poesía. Qué bonita, qué loca.”

  Bianca rose from the bench. She felt sick. Gabe followed her into the house. The patio door slammed behind him; he grabbed her shoulders and spun her around to face him. “Why do you always embarrass me in front of my family?” His face flushed from the beer.

  “You don’t mind when I talk like that with you,” she said, mustering all the haughtiness she could. She was ready for a fight.

  “That’s different.” He wiped his palms across the sides of his spiky hair and looked away. “They don’t understand.”

  “They understand fine. You just never stick up for me. You used to love my poetry.”

  “I used to do a lot of things, Bee.” His voice softened. She stared at him, the man she’d watched grow up. Tall and well-built with bronze skin that released a mixture of Cool Water cologne and sweat, he smelled like a beach in the desert. His broad shoulders were stretch-marked where his muscles had grown faster than his skin. His otherwise clear boyish face, slightly impish with his upturned ears, flashed a scar below his eye where he ran into the side mirror of his uncle’s truck when he was little. Esme and Nana said he was a real travieso, would storm into the house in a fury, knocking plates of food off the table for no apparent reason. But then he would smile his charming dimpled smile and be forgiven. Not much had changed since then.

  She sighed, the fight leaving her chest, her stomach. She was tired.

  “Come here,” he whispered. He pulled her to his body and wrapped his arms around her, pressing his lukewarm beer bottle to her shoulder. His kisses were rough, his sour breath hot against her face and mouth. This Gabe she knew well. She walked a fine line with him. He loved her or despised her when he was drunk. Tonight, he loved her.

  She let him hoist her up, wrapped her legs around him. She was Coatlicue, Azteca mother of all creation, and destruction. She was Coatlicue, fumbling through the dark. She’d break through. She’d find a crossing—or create one herself.

  Gabe carried her to the laundry room, locked the door, hoisted her atop the dryer. He reached under her sundress and pulled her thong to the side, pushing his fingers deep inside her, kissing her neck and breasts.

  She was a snake. Careful. She could bite. She could. But didn’t.

  She combed her fingers through his short, black hair as she held the back of his head. They wer
e drops of water on a hot comal. Their bodies scorched each other. They were not meant to make a meal, only to test the fire.

  “You’re sexy as hell,” he groaned. “Mi poeta.”

  His breath against her neck. His voice in her ear. A voice that called butterflies from inside her. Made her think in clichés. Colored her dreams in red. I’ve loved you too much too long too hard. Red as the desert. Where oceans were dry as salt flats. Where red meant lost and lost meant dead.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Mmm . . . then let me fuck you.”

  He pulled her off the dryer and bent her over, face to machine. She pressed her ear against the cool, smooth metal and listened as he slid on a condom then thrust into her.

  The echo of a seashell.

  He leaned down and kissed her cheek when he finished. She straightened her dress and pulled up her chonies as he opened the door to the bathroom and took a piss.

  “Hey, look. I’m sorry you felt uncomfortable out there. I don’t want you making any scenes. We’re trying to butter him up, right? So we might have a chance at a future, our restaurant.” He zipped; she nodded. “Hey, come here,” he said, his voice soft, playful. “You know I love you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Or you love my ass?”

  He squeezed her ass. “Both. Now let’s get your ass back outside. Don’t get all dramatic again. Save that for your poems.”

  The first nights after he’d left for college, he’d promised to come home weekends but never did. She was imprisoned in her house. Mama wouldn’t lessen Bianca’s sentence even though she was losing it, caged in her room listening to Mama and Dad fight. Mama wouldn’t risk Bianca getting drunk and ending up in the hospital again. Couldn’t trust her not to hurt herself at a party.

  Bianca had made a plan. She would be a writer. She would get out of town. She’d move to a big city like the postcard of New York her English teacher had given her when she’d admitted she wanted to be a poet but didn’t know how since all poets were dead like Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath and her teacher hadn’t laughed because he’d understood why she would’ve thought so. Instead he’d said she was already a poet, and there were others like her. Outside the Valley, there were such things as open mics and poetry slams and international competitions, and she could join them, she could win.