by Daniel Wetta
for it. She would be moving on wheels at last, her life forever free, gracias to the miracle of cars!
She couldn’t wait to drive past Carlos to impress him. Carlos was the fourteen year old “guapo” (handsome kid) who had recently begun working in his father’s vendor stand just a block from where Ana lived. The stand was on the busy corner of the road that ran parallel to the beach and passed in front of Javier‘s store. Carlos was tall and cool. He smoked cigarettes in tough poses. He arrived at work every day on a lime-green motorized scooter. His father, who was old like Ana’s dad, had been a lifelong friend of Javier. In his stand, which he had worked alone for years, he sold produce, fruit, flowers, orange juice, newspapers, and cigars. Now Carlos helped him after school, and on Saturdays he worked alone so that his father could have a day off from work. How impressed Carlos would be seeing Ana calling to him from the Jeep at the corner!
Zmph! The Jeep engine started easily. While the car was in neutral, Ana tapped the accelerator to hear it gun and to make sure that she was properly seated to reach it. She worried just a bit about her ability to feel the gear shift when the clutch released. She decided that if she could successfully get into first gear, she would take it to second and drive the vehicle in that gear to her father’s store. Maybe on the way home she would become more venturesome in higher gears.
Her attempt at first gear failed and the jeep cut off. She glanced nervously at her house. She was parked in front of it, but more directly in front of her neighbor’s house. There was no car parked in front of her so she had easy access to the street. She forgot to put the jeep back into neutral, so when she started the car in gear, it leapt forward a bit. She panicked and hit the brake. It cut off again. She cursed. Focus, Ana, she told herself. She was hoping Carlos was not looking in her direction from his stand. She took a couple long breaths and relaxed. I just have to be confident, she thought. She saw in her side mirror that there were no cars coming, so she started the engine, eased out the clutch, and-oh my god-she was moving! She came up fast on the car parked a couple spots ahead, so she veered clumsily to the street, quickly passed the gear to second (which was a lot easier), and now she was cruising!
She steered the jeep in a straight line. She noticed briefly her neighbor, señora Raul, walking by, but the woman did not see Ana. Ana saw the produce stand ahead on the corner on her right. She saw the lime-green scooter in front of it and then the dark crop of Carlos’ hair as he stood arranging some items on a table in front of the stand. Ana put on her beautiful smile that she would wear while greeting him. He was coming up fast in her view. She saw his long legs. The sides of the jeep were off, the top was off, and she was about to yell, “Eyyy, Carlos!” when she drove too close to the car parked behind his scooter. The right side of her jeep sideswiped the front of the parked vehicle. The clash of metal scared her. She meant to slam the brakes, but in her confusion she accelerated. She pulled the wheel too far to the left, gasped, overcorrected to the right, struck Carlos’ scooter, saw the wide-open eyes of Carlos as he leapt out of the way, and hit the brake in a panic. It was a little too late. She took out the table that he had been preparing and made a direct hit on the produce stand before jerking to a halt.
Her next awareness was of some boards and a sign dangling into the jeep above her head. She saw some corn, potatoes, and lettuce in the seat with her. She felt a little blood on her forehead, and then she saw Carlos picking himself up amid the mess in the sidewalk. From the busy street, a city policeman saw what happened and gunned his car to the accident scene. Just before Ana had fainted, she had seen that the policeman was the old friend of the family, Officer Pera. Ana probably was unconscious just a few minutes. When she awoke, Officer Pera was checking the bump on her head. Her mom was standing beside him with a face that quickly transformed itself from worry to an angry glare. On the other side of the jeep was Carlos with a look of complete bewilderment on his face.
“I’m so sorry, Carlos,” was all that Ana could say.
Punishment, of course, would be meted by Ana’s father. Her mom had several things to say to her, but after that, she refused to speak to her until her father came home from work. Her sisters snuck into Ana's bedroom that afternoon to get the low down from Ana on what in the world she was doing, but, in short minutes, Ana’s mother whisked them from the room.
Ana was forbidden supper that evening. She heard the long murmuring conversation of her parents in various rooms of the house below. Finally, that evening her dad visited her. He first wanted to hear her version of the story with an explanation of why she did it.
He had other questions: Why did she think she could drive? Why did she steal her own father’s car? (Ana had not thought of that!) Did she realize that she could kill herself or others? What were her ideas about making restitution to the father of Carlos for the extensive damages he had suffered and for which Javier was going to have to pay? (In fact, Javier already had written him a check for a substantial amount of money.)
When confronted with her father’s purposeful questions, Ana became overwhelmed by a fit of remorse, especially for Carlos, whom she might have killed. She fell into a convulsion of sobbing. Javier sat on the bed beside her. He softly put his arm around his daughter and let this run its course. He then listened quietly to Ana's halting voice as she recounted the morning’s events. He discovered that this adventure of driving had been years in the making.
Ana looked into her father’s hurt eyes, but she perceived that he had adopted this look. What she really saw deep inside him was amusement with his mischievous daughter. He would make her see that she had erred tremendously and would deal with consequences. But she also saw his kindness. Always she felt his unconditional love. She adored him for this, and she knew that whatever punishment he meted would be fair and supported by thoughts of her wellbeing.
Still, she felt horrible.
“I have made a big mess of our lives, papa, and I am so sorry I took your jeep without asking you first!”
Javier almost broke out laughing at this, but he sucked in a long breath to maintain a serious composure.
“Okay, Ana,” he said. “This is what we are going to do. You are a terrible driver, do you agree? We need to make you safe on our city streets. So I am going to teach you to drive correctly. We will do this out in the country first, and you will only do what I say to do, and I will be the one to determine when you have the skills to drive.”
Ana’s heart leapt with the excitement of hope renewed. Could this possibly be true? She wanted to jump with joy, but, instead, she found her well of remorse, and with sorrowful puppy eyes she answered, “Yes, papa, what else?”
“You have to pay back señor Moreno for his damages. I have already paid him. The truth is, Ana, you could work twenty years and not be able to pay him for the damages that you caused. So you will have to repay me. This means that on Saturdays you will come with me to the store, and I will put you to work. You will not be allowed to run with your friends, and you will work all day. You will also have to keep your grades good in school even though you have less time.”
“Papa, will I have to work twenty years?” Ana asked. She was suddenly alarmed. Would it be better just to go to prison for three or four years, she wondered?
“At first I thought that you should work directly for señor Moreno, but I do not want you working alone with his older son. So this is why I decided that you will work for me,” Javier answered. “And I think that you should work this entire school year for me. If you learn to drive responsibly, I will let you stop the work at the end of the school year. We will take a little time after mass and Sunday dinner for our driving lessons. But you will not drive a car on your own again until you are fifteen, when you can legally get your permit to drive. Until then, you drive only when I am in the car.”
And so Ana worked out her sentence on Saturdays with her father. He used her as his personal assistant: He kept her beside him as he rounded the departments of the store. During these rounds, he had A
na help his managers to make decisions about displays; determine which items were selling or not selling; help this person or that to do a particular task;and, sometimes, he got Ana busy matching invoices in accounts payable. Ana was smart, and although she wanted to be playing with her friends and felt so sad every Saturday morning when she awoke, she got interested in the work as soon as she arrived in the store. She did excelled in her tasks. She had a particular aptitude for artistic presentation of displays. The store managers actually liked to seek her opinions and ask for ideas. The most fun that she had was to attend to the customers and make them laugh.
Fortunately, Javier usually ended work by 3:00 pm, so Ana could rejoin the parties in the kitchen of her home and catch up with the day’s events. Saturday night was a big night for socializing in the Valdez household. Always family and friends came over. Lili was a gracious but busy hostess. The older sisters helped prepare the dinner and set the tables. Dinner often went in shifts as groups of people arrived at different times. Ana greeted everyone and invited all back to the kitchen for their first drinks and appetizers.
With so much talking going on in the home,