“Javi?”
“He says he’s been dreaming about it since school last year.”
I tried to imagine it, but Javier had dry lips that made it hard to envision.
“Why doesn’t he ask me himself?”
Lucho shrugged. “Scared, I guess.”
Part of me was thrilled that any boy would want to kiss me and that he would be too scared—of me!—to ask. But how I wished it were Lucho instead.
“I’ve never done it before,” I admitted quietly.
Lucho looked amused. He raised his forearm to his mouth and kissed it. “It’s like this,” he said.
“But on the lips?”
“Pretty much the same.”
I nodded and looked down at my flat white sandals. Silence gathered in the space between us until, the next thing I knew, Lucho grabbed my shoulders and his lips, soft as pudding, touched mine for an instant. He stepped back quickly. “It’s like that,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“No what?”
“You have to tell Javi no.”
“Why not? You were all right.”
I was breathing fast. “I like you, Lucho,” I said.
“You joking?” he asked.
“No.”
I was trying so hard to read his face but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He just kept staring at me. The boys on the soccer field shrieked as one of them scored.
“Okay,” he said finally, and he grinned. “Javi’s gonna be mad, though.”
Things quickly became tense. Lucho and I had to meet in secret, because of Javi and because of my mother. My mother started complaining that she never saw me anymore. She worked from our house during the day, mending and altering piles of clothes. Usually I was responsible for picking up stray straight pins from the floor and returning them to their cushion. She told me she had stepped on six in the past week and showed me, on the soles of her feet, the spots where the blood had beaded up and dried, a constellation of scabs.
“I’m sorry, Mami,” I said.
“Where is it you go anyway?”
“Just around.”
“You got tired of me?”
“No.”
I hadn’t told her anything about Lucho because I knew she would say I was too young for a boy. Or that no boy was good enough for me. Or that trying to keep a boy wasn’t worth it. Or any number of protestations.
“You come back so late,” my mother said. She’d turned back to the sewing machine and said it quietly.
“But I always come back.”
“Mmmmm.” She pushed a piece of green fabric through the machine.
I stayed at home that day, though it felt like the hardest thing I would ever do. I called Lucho and told him my mother needed me. He said he did, too, which was the first time he had said anything like that to me and my chest squeezed the life out of my heart when I heard it. Tomorrow, I told him. But I was pulled in two by the thought of him waiting for me and by the sight of my mother, alone at her machine, missing me.
I picked the straight pins off the floor and swept up the fabric ends and loose threads. The day was cloudy, casting a gray veil over our house and inside it, too. That night, I lay on my back on the bed while my mother rubbed on her night cream and then came to bed. Usually, she hummed as she got ready for bed, but that night she was quiet. When she lay down, the thin mattress sighed and sagged beneath her as she squirmed into place. My eyes were open and I stared at the bands of moonlight stretched across our stucco ceiling like tiny highways, like the ones they had in the city. After a few minutes, I turned on my side, wriggling toward my mother until I could get my head in the crook of her shoulder, pulling her arm over me like a blanket. I was trying to see what it would feel like if I lay next to Lucho. I knew my mother probably thought I wanted to be close to her—and in a way I did—but I was also imagining him.
Lucho and I found our favorite spot, among the trees, as far from the town as we could manage. At first, we sat on the ground with our fingers laced through each other’s, gossiping about people in school because we were nervous and didn’t know what else to talk about. We tried to climb the trees but the delicate trunks shredded beneath our feet, which we knew they would since we had both lived here forever, but it was a period of acting like we didn’t know things we did just to be able to experience them together, as if for the first time. On the other side of the island, where no one I knew had ever been, thousands of brown pelicans were supposedly making a home, the shoreline thick with them. We walked as far as we could without getting lost and held our breath and strained to hear them but we never could. We kissed a lot, under the midday sun, pretending we were in the telenovelas sometimes and other times letting our lips meet while the rest of our bodies stayed rigid and unsure, afraid to do anything but peck at each other like birds. And then, after almost three weeks, Lucho put his hand under my shirt.
“Have you ever done this before?” I asked when his hand was still only making circles on my stomach. I knew where he was going.
“No,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone that, though.” He smiled.
I lay back and let him do it, to see how it would feel. He was slow but finally his hand reached my breast. I wished it was bigger, something more than a little lump, but it wasn’t yet. He dropped his hand over me like a clamshell and kept it still.
“How does that feel?” he asked.
It didn’t feel like much. “Okay.”
“Should I press down?” he asked. I had my eyes closed and I could feel the heat from the sun on my skin where my shirt was raised.
“Try it,” I said.
He flattened his palm and rubbed it against me. After a few seconds he stopped and drew his hand away. I opened my eyes and tugged my shirt down over my stomach. “That was good,” I told him.
I tried to come home early in the evenings, to spend time with my mother before she went to bed. Often, by the time I walked through the door, though, she was already asleep and snoring lightly with her face half-buried in her pillow. One time I leaned down to kiss her good night on her forehead and, with the hand I put down on the pillow to steady myself, I felt something damp. I ran my fingertips over the spot and I knew—she had been crying. I began running my hand over her pillowcase every time she was already sleeping and usually I could feel the moisture, her collected tears.
Once—only once—she was waiting for me when I came home after she would normally have been in bed.
“It’s so late,” she said. She was standing with her arms crossed, her back to our floor fan, which whirred and snapped behind her as it turned. She wore her nightgown and nightcap, and the skin under her eyes had a gray-violet cast without her makeup.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Something happened to your brain? You can’t remember where you just were?”
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” I said, which probably made it sound more like I was.
“Get in the shower,” she said.
“What?”
“Whatever it is you’ve been doing, I want you to wash it off.”
“But it was nothing.”
“Why can’t you do nothing here at home then?” She raised her voice.
“Because.”
Her eyes were wide. She was hardly blinking. “Because?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on. I’ll turn on the water. You can keep your clothes on if that’s easier.” She started past me, toward the bathroom.
“I can do what I want,” I said, though in truth I was scared to say it.
“Is that what you think?”
I was afraid even to nod. My mother’s nostrils flared and her eyes flashed. I don’t think I had ever seen her so shakingly angry.
“Because that’s wrong,” she picked up, after a few seconds. “I decide what you do. I choose where you can go. I choose who you spend time with. It’s always been that way.” Each time she said “I” she jab
bed her index finger against her breastbone, so hard I thought it might go through.
I shook my head. To this day, I don’t know where I came up with the strength to do it, but I said, “No, Mami. I can choose.”
“Why don’t you choose me anymore?” she screamed, a high watery scream that smothered every bit of silence in the world.
I gazed at the floor. I knew what she was thinking—that I was all she had in the world and that I was leaving her. It had always been the two of us and now it wasn’t. “I don’t know,” I said softly.
We both stood there.
“You should take a shower,” my mother said finally, and then turned from me and walked to the bedroom.
There were times when I needed to be on my own, too—away from Lucho, away from my mother, away from the world. I started doing what I had often done when I was young: wading into the ocean and holding my breath underwater. I stood on the beach and watched as the water lapped up on the sand, darkening it, the moisture spreading out, as if the shoreline were a piece of paper whose edge was dipped in water. Eventually, I would walk out, the water wrapping around my ankles and then my knees and then my waist as I made my way deeper. After a certain point, the sand stopped being rough, studded with broken shells, and instead became like velvet under my feet. When the water was up to my shoulders, I drew as much air as I could get into my lungs and went under. I loosed my feet from the sand and floated. I stayed as still as I could. The sounds of the island were muffled, almost nonexistent. I had learned long ago not to open my eyes because of the salt, but I could see myself: weightless and wilted, swaying like seaweed under the current of the water. Back and forth. I stayed for as long as I could and then slipped my head through the surface of the water to get air. Almost always, I came up meters from where I had started, tugged by the water. I never went down twice in a row even though I loved being under. I saved it for the next time: that feeling, just for a moment, like I needed nothing and no one needed me, like I had lost myself, like I was lost to the world.
Life went on like this until Easter. Lucho and I took every opportunity to scurry into the hills of the island and be alone. Back in school, I had been attracted to him because he was good-looking—his hair not as black as the other boys‘, slightly blanched from the sun; his skin smoother, almost creamy; his legs not as skinny as some of his friends’. But I was learning of his kindness and of a certain shyness that lurked beneath a veneer of confidence. It was easy to talk to him. Each time I touched him, it was as if a live wire was switching under my skin. I even told him about my father. Out of embarrassment, I had always lied to my friends and said that my father died soon after I was born. I thought it would be too humiliating to admit that my father was a man my mother slept with once, a man my mother hadn’t known then and neither of us knew now. But it felt okay when I told Lucho. He didn’t say anything back but he didn’t judge either. He just smiled and folded me in his arms.
I helped my mother with her costume, a more ostentatious version of La Virgen’s humble blue-and-white robes. We affixed sequins to every hem and lined the cape and hood drape in pink satin. We also put pleats around the back of the cape so it would billow out in the wind during the procession, making the lining visible. She was very pleased with it when it was finished.
“This is my big day,” she said as soon as we woke up on Easter morning. The white sunlight streamed through our windows as if somewhere a dam had broken and sent it gushing forth. The thready chirping of birds and the sound of dogs barking pierced the air outside. My mother was sitting straight up in our bed, strands of her dark hair falling from under her nightcap. “Mass is at nine o’clock,” she said, “and the procession is right after. I want you at both.”
“I know.”
“No running off doing whatever it is you have been doing.”
“Okay.” I rubbed my eyes. I could hardly keep them open in the sunlight.
Since that one night, my mother had never again confronted me about my activities apart from her, but she couldn’t resist taking jabs when she had the chance. She slapped my thigh lightly through the sheet and made a tsk-ing sound with her mouth. “Get up,” she said, and then stood and walked to the bathroom.
For me, Mass was just something to sit through. I wasn’t like my mother, who was reverent and wide-eyed all the way through and who, when Father Castillo raised the cup of wine and the piece of bread to change them into blood and body, positively trembled with awe. The church was more lavishly decorated than usual, with mountains of flowers—orange and white, yellow and pink—clumped together in pots wrapped in colored foil. The scent was powerfully sweet and I spent the hour with my eyes closed, imagining I was in the hills with Lucho where, sometimes, when the temperature was just right, the fragrance from the flowers outside lifted in the same way. At the end of Mass, when Father Castillo made the announcement about the Easter procession to follow, my mother squeezed my hand.
“I have to get ready!” she whispered, and quickly kissed both my cheeks before scampering down the aisle to the sacristy, where her costume awaited.
Lucho stood next to me during the procession. I had asked him to join me. Despite the risk that Javi might see us together, Lucho said he would come. He knew it was important to me. We watched as children in their Sunday clothes walked behind a man carrying a simple wooden cross, two planks bound at their intersection by rope. Then there was a break and for at least a minute nothing happened.
“Is it over?” Lucho asked.
“Wait,” I said, craning my neck to see past the crowd of onlookers, and down the street.
Then the bells started. Many of the people lining the street had bells in their hands and, upon some cue that I had missed, they all started ringing them at once. It was a joyous, buoyant chorus, the sound of rays of sunlight breaking upon the earth. They started just as the rest of the procession came into view: Father Castillo carrying a carved wooden figure of Christ on the cross, maybe fifty people behind him walking with lit candles, little girls carrying bouquets of white flowers and, finally, my mother, waving at the crowd, smiling brightly. Everyone else was simply walking but my mother turned and bowed and waved so hard I could have sworn she was trying to shake her hand from her arm.
Lucho poked me and pointed at her. “What’s she doing?”
I shrugged. “She’s happy.” But I wanted to bury my face in his arm from embarrassment. And I did turn away for a moment, to check the expressions on other people’s faces and to stare briefly at my shoes as my mother passed in front of us.
“She tried to say something to you,” Lucho said, poking me again.
I looked up then and waved. She was glancing back at me and I saw it in her eyes—a flicker of disappointment that I hadn’t been watching her steadfastly the entire time. That’s what she wanted: my whole attention always, my unwavering gaze. I saw her glance at Lucho, too, and I knew she disapproved. At that, I linked my arm through his and held it tight as my mother stared back at the two of us while she walked away, following the parade. As soon as she turned her head, I dropped Lucho’s arm.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was so close?” I asked accusingly. “I almost missed her.”
“You knew she was there.”
“You should have told me.”
I didn’t know why, but I was suddenly angry with him.
“Whatever, Ysabel,” he said, shaking his head. He tried to take my hand once but I wouldn’t let him. I felt so confused, everything bursting and crumbling inside of me. The town square erupted in celebration as the end of the procession snaked its way behind the church and out of sight. Lucho and I stood silent in the middle of the exuberance.
Finally he said, “Do you want to go?”
“I want to find my mother first,” I told him.
“Really?
I nodded.
“Okay. I’ll wait for you, then,” he said, and I knew he meant in our usual spot, where he would be kicking at rocks and drawing figures in
the dirt until I arrived.
I didn’t say anything back. I just started walking, navigating my way through the crowd, people clapping and singing and shouting over each other. When I got to the back of the church, Father Castillo was there carrying the tapered white candles in a fold of newspaper. He smiled when he saw me.
“Have you seen my mother?” I asked.
“She was a beautiful Virgin Mary.”
“Do you know where she went?” I felt impatient.
“Down to the water, I think. Are you all right?” He shifted the candles in his arms.
“Thank you,” I said, and started toward the beach.
As soon as I got there, I saw her. I saw the back of her, still in her costume, her ankles in the water. The blue satin swelled in the breeze. Then I watched as she walked deeper and deeper into the water, like she was sinking into the earth. Her cape clung to the surface until it grew soaked and slumped under. Finally she drew her head below the water. I kicked off my sandals and ran, as fast as I could, my feet burning on the hot, dry sand. I splashed into the water to where she was and dropped under. I knew, since she was the one who had taught me, that her eyes would be closed. I reached out my hand until I felt her, and I didn’t let go. After just a few seconds, my lungs grew fuzzy with fire, tiny starbursts of pain popping in my chest. Even so, I held on. Lucho was somewhere in the white-hot sun waiting for me. I would find him later and for the whole summer we would go on as we had been, meeting in secret, exploring each other’s skin, figuring out what it meant to be with another person. We would have silly conversations—about radio stations and hens and the restaurants in Panama City—that felt significant, and we would laugh over nothing, over one of us tripping on a branch or over a leaf stuck to my face. It would be like that until school started again, when he would tell me, for fear of losing Javi as a best friend, that we were finished. I would argue and say we could still meet in secret, that no one would know. But Lucho was firm. He said that Javi and he always hung out after school so there would be no time for me, anyway. I would suffer for months and know for the first time the feeling of my heart breaking. I would know what my mother had been feeling for weeks. And I would discover how much of life is defined by what you want to keep and what you are forced to lose. But all of that would come later. Right then I was floating, holding my mother’s hand. It was almost like flying. And I had the most beautiful image: I saw us from above, from the sky, two flecks of being connected at the edge of the wide, pale ocean, lost to everything but each other.
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