Fifteen and nineteen were worlds apart.
She was a college woman now, or would be again, soon. She still had time.
She wouldn’t go into the bathroom she’d used as a girlchild, growing up in the now-empty house. That bathtub was fucking cursed.
She used her parents’ master bath, really a bathroom as tiny as her girlhood one, not really “master” in the way she thought of fancy homes on the rich, white side of town. The only differences were that it was attached to her parents’ old bedroom—now hers, with her mattress on the floor and her small television-VCR combo propped on a plastic bin—and that their bathroom had no tub, only a shower.
Showers were safer.
Steam fogged the bathroom mirror so she ghosted, invisible.
She turned on the faucet, cupped the water in her hands, let it drip down the mirror, a rivulet, an artist pouring turpentine down her acrylic failure, a girlchild again invoking Bloody Mary.
There she was.
Bianca in the flesh.
Her family had left her.
Her boyfriend had a baby with another girl, who called her a murderer.
The desert had swallowed her back into its belly, and she was trying so hard to stay afloat.
She applied her makeup, tucked her dark hair into a messy bun, put on her Desert Herald polo shirt and jeans, fed the boxer the last of the puppy food, and went to work, where she’d take calls all day from folks across the Valley looking to yard-sale their junk, find homes for their animals, locate their lost/love/jobs. She’d make poems out of classifieds. Hide haiku in the ads.
All the while strumming, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive.
Eight
Sorry Afterward
With Jubilee
It wasn’t supposed to be part of his investigation. He’d taken Bianca to Disneyland for some carefree, case-study-free fun. It was supposed to be the happiest place on earth for Christ’s sake.
Disneyland was decorated for Halloween, with a giant, orange Mickey Mouse jack-o’-lanterning the entrance and The Nightmare Before Christmas enshrouding the usual Haunted Mansion. On Main Street Plaza, an automaton fortuneteller glowed outside the entrance to the old-fashioned ice cream parlor. “Let’s find out our fortune,” Joshua told Bee, pulling a dollar out of his pocket. “What does Madame Fortuneteller think of us, together?”
“What if she tells you the girl you’re with is totally bonkers? Leave her at once?”
“I could either unplug the witch, exposing her for the fraud she is. Or I could run. Are you totally bonkers?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God. Me too.” He inserted the dollar into the machine. A coin tumbled down and dropped into his hand. “Insert coin for your fortune.” He handed it to Bianca. “You do it.”
She kissed the coin then released it into the slot. The white bulbs lining Madame Esmeralda’s booth lit up. The fortuneteller opened her eyes, gazed into her crystal ball, which turned from dull gray to hazy blue, clouds of smoke swirling inside. She bobbed her scarfed head. Seconds later, a card shot into a slot in the booth. Joshua pulled it out, cleared his throat, and read in an official tone: “Hear ye, hear ye. Madame Esmeralda’s Prophecy proclaims: You sometimes have a desire to destroy things, especially in your younger days, for which you are sorry afterward.” He paused, reflective, then made a sour face. “The witch got it wrong. That’s not a romantic reading.”
“That reading’s meant for me,” Bianca said, somber. He’d meant this as a joke but she seemed to be taking all of it too seriously.
“Nah, that was crap. Esme’s a fraud.” He shoved the card into his pocket, slung one arm around Bianca’s shoulder, and held Jayden’s hand with the other.
“Strange you say that,” she said. “Esme’s my ex’s mother’s name.” Her voice was flat.
“Bee, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.” Her intensity attracted him to her, but sometimes a small part of him wished she’d lighten up. He wondered what would happen if he ever said this aloud.
“No, I know. It’s fine.” She squeezed his hand resting on her shoulder.
“Let me buy you an ice cream, as apology. Me and Jayden like the fudge-dipped cones best, right, kiddo?” Jayden nodded, licking his lips.
“You read my mind,” Bianca said.
The shop smelled of fresh-baked waffles. They ordered three cones then sat at a booth in the fifties-decorated diner, with checkered tabletops and red-vinyl chairs with metal frames. As a person of color maybe Joshua should’ve critiqued or at least mistrusted nostalgic Americana, yet he found it comforting. Patti had liked fifties kitsch. She’d wanted to be Lucille Ball. “Man, I miss it at her house.”
“Why’d you leave?”
Joshua looked over at Jayden, who was engrossed in his cone and watching kids shop for candy in the next shop, so Joshua lowered his voice and explained to Bee how Patti couldn’t keep him. No room once her son and his family had moved in. The son had lost his job. At first, Joshua had slept on the couch and let her son and his wife have his room. Her grandchildren had the other spare room, Olivia’s before she went to the group home. Patti had said she’d put up bunk beds so Joshua could share with her grandkids, but he’d told her he’d rather sleep on the couch in the living room, near the warm kitchen, where he could smell whatever she was cooking. That had made her laugh. But he’d overheard her son arguing with her. Patti shouldn’t keep Joshua. He wasn’t like them. Not family. The house was too crowded. His social worker, Ms. McCall, came then, and Patti cried when she hugged him goodbye. Be a good boy, hijo. Remember how much your Patti loves you, Yoshua.
“What a jerk. That jealous pendejo.” She glanced over at Jayden, a guilty look on her face for cursing in Spanish. She mouthed sorry to Joshua.
“It was a long time ago.”
Melted ice cream dripped down her hand. “You’d better finish that,” Joshua said. He pulled a folded piece of paper from his wallet. “I saved this from a fortune cookie. When you have only two pennies left, buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other. Survival and beauty. They sustain me. Survival, I’ve got. Beauty, I’ve been searching for.”
“Where did you come from?” she asked, sweeping her hand across his face.
He shrugged, smiling in a way he hoped was charming. “You ready to go build Jubilee a bear?”
Jayden heard that part and, chocolate all over his face, yelled, “Yes!”
They skipped through the plaza, arms linked, Jayden scrambling to keep up, Joshua pushing the stroller too fast. People stared, but they didn’t care. Bianca laughed, breathing hard. “You remind me of who I used to be,” she said.
But a few steps ahead, she froze, transfixed by the window display of a store. Huge photos featured newborns, sleeping atop bright flower petals. On the display-case shelf, dolls posed the same as in the photos, some wearing flower costumes with petals on their heads.
The shop was called Anne Geddes. Joshua had never noticed it before.
In the doorway, a saleswoman in a black dress cradled a doll in her arms.
It looked like Jubilee.
Bianca stared as if in shock. Her hand went rigid in Joshua’s, her eyes opened too wide. She steered the stroller away from the store.
Joshua followed her, holding Jayden’s hand. “They look so real, don’t they?” He hadn’t meant to confront her with her demons, hadn’t meant to turn this into a therapy session, but sometimes it seemed like all she needed was a gentle nudge, like she was so close. He couldn’t help himself. “Like Jubilee?”
“Jubilee’s not a doll.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She stopped and turned to face him. “Is that what you think?” Her voice was cold. “You think I’m crazy? I know what people think of me. At the park with Jubilee, the other moms stare. I know Jubilee is different.” She said differen
t like it was a shard of glass on her tongue, slicing her. She glared at him, then turned abruptly and pushed the stroller into the crowded walkway, away from Joshua and Jayden.
“Hey, Bee. I didn’t mean that,” Joshua called after her. “I was only pointing out the resemblance.”
Jayden looked upset. “Is Jubilee a doll?”
Joshua had too many fires to put out, didn’t know what to say, so he just grabbed Jayden’s hand and pulled him into the crowd after Bianca.
“I’m not crazy,” she said again when he and Jayden caught up with Jubilee and her outside the House of Blues, with its smell of smokehouse barbecue and the soulful music of a saxophone.
“I know, love. I know.”
“Jubilee’s not like that.”
“No, she’s different, isn’t she?” He grabbed her hand and squeezed, and she let him. “Can’t we forget it? I was stupid.”
She rolled her eyes, turned again, but Jayden grabbed her hand before Joshua could say anything else and said, “Come on, Bee. It’s okay. Let’s go make a bear for Jubilee.”
She smiled weakly at him, and Joshua’s stomach coiled. He watched helplessly as Jayden led her into the Build-A-Bear shop, and sighed. He’d already messed everything up. What could he do but follow?
In the shop, Bianca remained guarded and said almost nothing to Joshua, though she was sweet and motherly as usual to Jayden, who seemed appeased, stuffing and dressing and giving a heart to matching giraffes for him and Jubilee.
“It’s like magic,” Jayden said, laughing, as the stuffed heart started beating.
Nine
The Restaurant
Before Jubilee
A few nights after her disastrous bar-crashing, Bianca peeked through the slits in Gabe’s fingers as he covered her eyes and whispered, “Almost there.” He was taking her out to dinner to make up for the burritos he still owed her, and as he parallel parked, she looked around, speculating where they were supposed to eat. He’d wanted it to be a surprise, but she didn’t know any restaurants in this neighborhood that were still open. So many things had closed since she was a girl.
The summer before her freshman year in high school, Lily and Bee had spent every night together, staying up until morning, prank calling boys, playing truth or dare, stirring up batches of rice crispy treats or muddy buddies, watching movies. They’d traipse off to the Donut Shop on Main Street at the westernmost side of town, three blocks south of their houses, traveling one of two ways:
1.) Shaking their hips down the busy Rio Vista if they wanted to check people out and pause on their trek to talk smack with whomever drove by or happened to be out on their front lawn, or late at night when they needed the protection of the streetlights and the neighborhood watch signs and the porch lights. Rio Vista kept them safe.
2.) Sprinting through the potholed back alley if they wanted to get there fast, like if they needed a sugar rush from chocolate old-fashioned doughnuts and sweet tea with crushed ice ASAP, or if they felt like getting spooked by the unlit empty lot that stretched to the end of the town limit where old, shopping-cart-pushing vagrants camped out and lit bonfires in barrels and, probably, there were ghosts kicking it too. That was the summer before she’d heard of La Llorona roaming the New River, which flowed in the ridge below the cliff and, folks said, green and soap-scummed, carried industrial, urban, and agricultural waste from across the Mexicali border, killing all the fish and reeking worse than the beef plant during the hottest part of summer. Swimming in the river could give a body rashes, sores, or make them violently ill. Mama had told her all that stuff, but she hadn’t told her about La Llorona.
Sure, they’d played Bloody Mary in bathroom mirrors, sprinkling water on the glass and chanting Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, and they’d played light as a feather stiff as a board. But never La Llorona. If Bianca had known about La Llorona then, poor sad woman who drowned her babies in a fit of rage and heartbreak then prowled that frothy, stinking river where old men and boys fished but never ate what they caught, perhaps mistaking all the other dead and glowing things entangled there for her lost ones, she would’ve been scared for sure and never would’ve gone through the alley by herself, day or night. She never would’ve met Gabe washing his pea-soup-green pickup truck in the driveway of his corner-house where the alley met that empty lot. He never would’ve seen her racing by, her chanclas slapping at the gravel, her dark ponytail flapping at her back, her thick thighs and round hips already pouring from her cuffed jean shorts, her breasts already filling her paisley tank top. He never would’ve called to her, asking where she was going so fast (she should have kept running). Then she never would’ve left her yellow-haired best friend behind and scrambled into Gabe’s raised pickup to jump the dirt hills behind his house like a dune-covered stunt-track, not scared that anyone could fly off the cliff and into the river. Not thinking that trucks or loving or the country could be dangerous. Before that summer, she never knew what lay behind the palm trees and branches and rolling mounds of dirt and scraps of junk and trash and, probably, homeless people’s huts.
But she did run through the alley. She did meet Gabe, just two years older, sixteen to her fourteen, but those two years he filled with all the things Mama never had. Caldo de rez and sticky red rice, filling her belly like embryonic fluid. After Gabe, the world was all nanas and cerveza and brujas and chile con carne and chupacabras. After Gabe, she’d turned into a La Llorona herself.
On Main Street, she let Gabe lead her blindfolded by his hands out of the car and onto the rutted sidewalk; she pressed her chanclas to the concrete, trying to feel for the cracks. She was torn between annoyance and excitement at the theatrics, not like the Gabe she’d gotten used to since he’d gotten Katrina pregnant. In high school, pre-Katrina, Gabe had loved surprises. He’d thrown Bianca a surprise party for her fifteenth birthday because Mama couldn’t afford a quinceañera. Gabe had promised Mama there wouldn’t be any alcohol, so when she showed up in the backyard, everyone hid the beer and tequila, and Bianca pushed her mama away, telling her they were hanging out with friends, that it wasn’t a party for grown-ups. She still felt bad they’d lied to her. Bianca would’ve loved a real quinceañera. She would’ve loved that father-daughter dance.
The toe of her chancla caught on a snag in the concrete and she staggered forward.
“I’ve got you,” Gabe said, laughing, holding her firmly.
She laughed too, but her body stiffened. “Where are we going?”
“Hang on, Bee. You’ll see in a second.” She could hear it in his voice that he was smiling, an impish thing who could barely contain his excitement. She also heard keys jangling and the opening of a glass door. A ding-ding sounded as they walked through. What she didn’t hear was any other sound, no voices, no plates and dishes clanging, no music or television playing in the background.
She pulled off the blindfold and looked around. Wait, what? The restaurant was abandoned, empty. It seemed clean enough, booths and chairs stacked neatly at the edge of the room, no roaches scuttling across the floor, no dirty dishes stacked in piles at the bar. There were water glasses at the bar, clear and sparkling crystal. But this wasn’t a restaurant anymore.
A For Sale sign hung in the window.
“What are we doing here? There’s no food,” she teased.
He pulled her toward him. “We’re gonna buy this place,” he said, hugging her tightly. “We’re gonna fix it up. We’re gonna start our restaurant, Bee.”
She jerked her head back, searching his face. Was he joking? It wasn’t like him to play tricks. His dark eyes danced and the corners of his mouth were upturned in a sly smile. He was being honest. She could tell. “But how?”
“I talked to my dad. It wasn’t easy, but he’s willing to help us get started. We’ll have to pay him back, but hey, it’s something.”
“Oh wow . . .” She breathed out slowly. She’d though
t Hector hated her after the barbecue. She’d thought Hector would never forgive her, now that he knew her secret; she was sure he would never look at her the same. She never would’ve expected that he’d be willing to help them. She felt a pang of longing for her own dad.
She looked around the almost-restaurant, allowing the shock to wear off, the swollen feeling of gratitude to sink in. “It’s ours?”
“Well, not yet. It belonged to my dad’s compadre and comadre a while back, but the wife got sick and they had to shut down. He let me borrow the keys so we could check it out.” He squeezed her hand.
She almost couldn’t believe this was Gabe saying these things. Gabe. The guy who wouldn’t move in with her. The guy who wouldn’t marry her. Who had to check everything with his baby’s mom so he didn’t make a wrong move and risk having his daughter taken away from him. Was this that guy? Or . . . was he sorry for what’d happened at the bar in Westmorland, keeping true to his promise to change? To go back to the Gabe Bianca had known before Katrina and Lana? Before he’d turned into some alternate version of himself—that angrier, more critical version she’d grown to despise. She pressed her face into his chest, laughing. This was real. She and Gabe would start a life together. All the darkness of the past two years was melting away.
Standing in the middle of the restaurant, their restaurant, he lifted her chin and kissed her softly on the mouth. “I know I’ve screwed up, Bee. But we’ll fix it. Like this place.”
She nodded, beginning to imagine what they could turn it into. “We can paint the walls red and yellow and orange like shades of desert sunset. We can play mariachi music and have dances on Saturday nights. Cumbias. Fiestas. Jarabe Tapatío. Oh, and I’ll ask Nana to help us with the menu. Of course we’ll have your favorite, fried fish tacos with pico de gallo, authentic Puerto Vallarta style, made special for Fridays during Lent . . . menudo on the weekends.” There’d be color and cultura. Chips and salsa. And it would be theirs.
“I was thinking of a sports bar,” Gabe said, snapping her out of her reverie.
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