Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

by Meg Medina

  Gloria’s next favorite is Lila, naturally. In fact, Lila’s the favorite champú girl around here, making even more tips than the hairdressers. That’s good news for me, since Lila sometimes takes me shopping on Saturdays, and she treats me to dinner, too.

  As usual, she’s been giving out love advice all morning — that, and inviting customers to her next Avon party, on Halloween night.

  “I’ll serve a little rum, play a little music, and make everyone have a good time,” she says. “It will be a party!”

  “I’ll come if your boyfriend is the bartender,” somebody calls out.

  Lila laughs from deep inside as the room breaks into applause. Lately the hot topic everyone wants to know about is her boyfriend, Raúl the cop. I’ve met him a couple of times. He’s all right. Big teeth, if you ask me. Who knows how long Lila will keep him.

  “I saw you two dancing at the club,” one of the manicurists says through her face mask. “He looks hotter than William Levy. Lucky!” She shakes her fingers like she’s been burned. Giggles.

  I just listen as I sweep. If you want to know anything about anybody’s love life in Queens, come to Salón Corazón on a Saturday. You would not believe the private stuff a woman will say when she’s in a plastic smock with a head full of foil. It’s like the chemicals are a truth serum. In no time, she’ll tell you all you want to know about her lousy husband and the good-looking neighbor with the big you-know-what.

  Just then Fabio growls and lunges at my broom.

  “Knock it off,” I say, spritzing him. I didn’t sleep well, and he’s been nipping the whole morning. “¡Vete!”

  “¡Dios mio! Is that Clara’s girl?”

  I look up from the pile of brown curls on the floor. A customer at Lila’s sink is peering at me from under the towel she’s using to guard her eyes. Uh-oh. It’s Beba, the show-off cashier at Lewis Pharmacy. Her daughter, Merci, is studying medicine at Cornell on a full scholarship — which she has to mention in every conversation. Beba used to give me lollipops from behind the counter when I was little. She’s a big lady with shelf boobs and full lips. If you didn’t know better, you could take her for a guy in drag.

  “Come here, let me take a look at you!”

  Oh, boy.

  “Yeah, that’s Piddy.” Lila winks at me as she works up a nice lather. “She’ll be sixteen next week. Gorgeous, right? You should see her with her hair down.”

  I stand there feeling a little dumb. Any minute somebody’s going to ask me if I have a boyfriend — or worse, how school’s going.

  “She looks just like Clara,” Beba says. “¡Igualita!”

  I glance at the mirror. Do I look that sour today? As sour as my mother? This is something I’ve never considered. My dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and I’ve broken out. I suppose she meant it as a compliment, though.

  “Gracias.” I force a smile and go back to sweeping.

  “Where do the years go?” Beba continues. “Just yesterday, my Merci was playing doctor with her dolls and this one was a sticky-fingered baby, and now look: Merci is studying at Cornell, and Piddy is all grown and beautiful.” She turns to me. “Tell me the truth: I’ll bet the boys die for you.”

  My cheeks feel hot. “Not really,” I say.

  But Beba isn’t listening.

  “Estás hecha una mujer.” She shakes her head sadly. A lot of the salon women tell me this: “You’ve become a woman.” None of them ever sounds too happy about it.

  She pulls back her towel again and looks up at Lila as if something has just occurred to her.

  “Now that we’re talking about her, how is Clara, anyway? I haven’t seen her in ages. Is she dating anyone?”

  I almost laugh out loud. We’re talking about Ma here, after all.

  Lila shakes her head. “She says she’s too busy.”

  “What woman is too busy for un buen hombre?”

  Lila shakes her head again and sighs.

  “I tell her, but she won’t let me fix her up.”

  Beba clicks her tongue.

  “Who can really blame her, though?” Her eyes cut to me and she finishes her sentence with a knowing look.

  I stop pushing my broom. Ma dating is ridiculous. I can’t even picture her enjoying herself here — with her friends. Ma hasn’t set foot in Salón Corazón since I can remember — even though everyone else she knows comes here. She always says you can get just as good a haircut at the beauty school on Main Street for ten bucks, even though I know you’re lucky to get out of there with both your ears still attached.

  “Mira para esto,” Lila says, clicking her tongue. “Beba, how could you let your split ends go like this, mija? Your hair is spongy. I can’t let you out of here looking like this.” She motions to me. “Piddy, por favor, get me the deep conditioner from the back. It’s in the red bottle with the pump top.”

  They’re trying to get rid of me, of course. I move off but stop just inside the beaded curtain to listen. Luckily Beba’s voice is big like the rest of her.

  “La pobre Clara. I still remember that terrible day; don’t you?” Beba says. “¡Qué escándalo! Agustín, that two-timer — he broke that woman’s heart forever.”

  Fabio trots over and starts to snarl in the doorway. He curls back his lips to show his little razor teeth. His milky eye fixes on me.

  “Shut up or I’ll stuff you in the dryer,” I hiss.

  But it’s too late. He erupts into a frenzy of yips and lunges. Lila turns around and peers around the doorway where I’m standing. She arches her brow.

  “Piddy? Did you find it?”

  I have no choice but to head to the supply room. It takes me a while to find the conditioner — way on the very top shelf next to the acrylic nail tips and wigged mannequin heads, so Lila is already rinsing when I get back.

  “What can I say, Beba? You know those types of men. They only know how to love with this.” She points to her groin. “Not with their hearts. And forget about loving kids . . .”

  She spots me waiting by the beaded curtain and stops talking. I’ve been feeling sleepy all morning, but now I am suddenly very awake.

  “Okay, Bebita,” Lila says after I hand her the bottle. “Now let’s see about this mane.”

  That evening we go shopping at City Fashion and stop for pizza at Vesuvio’s. It’s a dive, with a grimy floor and stuffing coming out of the vinyl seats, but it has the best Sicilian around. Lila lets long drips of orange grease slide onto her paper plate. I’m sitting in my new hooded sweatshirt, stirring my Coke with the straw and thinking.

  “You’re not hungry?” Lila looks at me carefully. My slice is untouched. “You’ve been so quiet and look a little pale. Maybe you’re getting sick?”

  “Did my father have another woman?” I ask suddenly.

  The question hangs in the air for a few seconds like a bad smell.

  “What?”

  “Did my father fool around? I heard what Beba said about him breaking Ma’s heart. Is that what happened?”

  Lila drops her slice and wipes her puckered fingers.

  “Ave Maria, Piddy. Do we have to talk about this stuff when we’re eating? You know my stomach. I’ll have indigestion just thinking about that guy.”

  “Did he?”

  She shakes pepper flakes all over her pizza in a fury.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Just tell me already. It’s not fair for Ma to keep something like that a secret, especially if other people know. How do you think that makes me feel?”

  She puts down the shaker and sighs.

  “Life’s complicated, Piddy. People keep stuff private sometimes. Why should they go around remembering bad things? Besides, there’s no rule that says you have to tell people everything in your past. Look at you. Are you going to tell me you don’t have a few secrets of your own?”

  She gives me a long look, waiting, but I don’t answer.

  “See?”

  We eat in silence for a few minutes.
/>   “Either he was a cheater or he wasn’t,” I say at last. “And I should know, either way.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says.

  “It does.” My throat squeezes into a stone as I say what I’ve thought for so long. “He left for a reason — because he had a girlfriend? Or because he just didn’t want me?”

  Lila stares at me a long time. Her long-last lipstick has finally worn off, and her face looks tired, even under her blush. Inside her brown eyes, I can almost see her torching all of my father’s photos, bagging his ties and undershirts for the trash. Why all that rage and secrecy? Part of me doesn’t want to know, the same part that wishes I could be a kid again and just let Lila hug me so I could feel her heartbeat through the wall of her chest. But I’m almost a woman now. That’s what everyone says. There’s no going back.

  “Have you asked your mother?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “You know Ma.”

  “Yeah.” Lila stares at her chipped fingernail polish for a while. Then she whispers. “Your father took on a girlfriend, and he got caught. He didn’t care who got hurt.”

  “He had a little chusma?” I ask.

  Lila looks like she’s going to be sick. Her lips are opening and closing as if she doesn’t know what to say next.

  “Come on, Lila,” I say. “I’m nearly sixteen. When do I get to know the story of my own life?”

  She takes a deep breath and nods.

  “You should be talking to your mother about this, but I’m going to tell you because I love you. If you tell anyone I told you this — even Mitzi — I won’t speak to you again. Te lo júro.” She makes the sign of the cross to tell me it’s a sacred oath.

  “Promise.”

  “Agustín was already married when he met your mother, Piddy. His girlfriend was your mami. Things got sticky when you came along.”

  For a second, I’m speechless. In fact, I’m sure I don’t understand.

  “Wait. You’re telling me Ma had an affair? With a married man?”

  She shakes her head, exasperated. “Look, let’s forget this whole business. I shouldn’t even be talking about this with you. Clara would tear the skin from my bones if she knew. I should never have opened my mouth.”

  But I don’t stop.

  “You’re telling me that Ma got pregnant — by a married guy?” Then it all opens up to me. “Ma was a chusma?”

  “Don’t ever say that again,” Lila says. “It was nothing like that.” Her voice is loud and sharper than she’s ever used with me. “She didn’t have all the facts about the Scuz.”

  I stare at her in shock.

  She takes a deep breath. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s just that you have to talk to your mother about this one, Piddy. Believe it or not, there are some things that even I know are not my business.” She picks up her pizza and takes a savage bite. “Now, eat.”

  The news leaves me in a daze around Ma. An affair with a married guy? It’s hard to imagine her having sex before marriage — hell, even hard to imagine her having sex at all, really. It’s like I don’t know who she is. Or maybe I finally do. In any case, it explains so much about Agustín and why he’s gone for good. For my whole life, he never remembered my birthday. I used to wonder what kind of dad doesn’t remember his own kid’s birthday. Come to find out, it’s the kind who has a whole family someplace else, of course.

  Not that I haven’t had good birthdays. Real good, in fact. Take the year I was eight. Lila and Ma took Mitzi and me to the Bronx Zoo on the Q-44 bus. That’s when I saw my first elephants and fell in love. They played with a ball on a rope. The zookeepers gave them a bath with push brooms and hoses, scrubbing their toenails and trunks. Afterward, Mitzi and I went in the gift shop, and Lila and Ma let me pick out a present. It was my jade elephant on a thin silver chain.

  “It means strength,” the lady behind the counter said as she held it out to me. When we got home, Ma baked me a Duncan Hines cake and let me lick the bowl without any warnings about salmonella. We made a blanket tent on the sofa bed that night; Lila and Mitzi stayed over, too.

  School is no better, though. Since the day I “played” fastball, when I step through the chain-link fence each morning, my shoulders hunch up, my mouth dries, and my head goes blank. A big cloud just swallows up everything about me. It’s like the school yard is a big miasma — one of those make-believe poison clouds that scientists once thought killed you until they figured out it was actually microbes in water and microwaves and other stuff that really gets you. Yeah, DJ’s a mind-erasing miasma, and it’s eating my brain. I forget everything about velocity. I can’t remember the reasons we were in World War I. Each period, I stare at the clock, thinking about getting from one class to the next without meeting Yaqui, like that’s the real test. Sitting in class is just what I do in between.

  Darlene and I are on our way to math, and she’s complaining about Mr. Nocera’s rumored pop quiz when someone smacks the back of my head. It happens so fast that at first I think it’s an accident. That’s how stupid I am. I don’t even know I’m in big trouble until it has swallowed me whole.

  Darlene stares straight ahead and starts walking fast.

  Another whack, this time harder.

  I whip around and find two girls I don’t know. They’re pretending they didn’t touch me, but they’re cracking up, and it’s obvious that I’m the punch line.

  “Quit it,” I say.

  “Quit what?” one of them says.

  Suddenly there’s a tug on my neck from behind, and with a tiny pop, I feel the spidery links of my chain break apart. I grab for my neck, but it’s too late. When I look, I see Yaqui walking away through the crowd.

  “Hey!” I shout as I try to follow. The girls block my way, and soon the wall of bodies in the halls is thick. I try to push through, but people push back, annoyed. Through the spaces between shoulders and backpacks, I think I can still see Yaqui, the small bun at the back of her head.

  “Give it back!”

  A few kids turn to look, but by the time I squeeze through them, Yaqui and her friends are gone again. All I see are colors, shirts, and ugly faces.

  The bell rings, but as the hall empties, I still can’t move. I stand there, trying to decide what to do. I’ve been mugged at school, but even Darlene has vanished and left me alone. I don’t blame her, really. I’ve started to cross over to the place where I’m too dangerous to know. My trouble might be contagious, and no one wants to catch this social disease. I get on my hands and knees and search every inch of the hall, up and down both sets of staircases. I rub dust bunnies in my fingertips, trying to find my elephant among the chewed pen caps and broken hair bands.

  Nothing.

  My dirty hands are still shaking when I finally get to class. My face feels hot, but my neck is unnaturally cold. Nothing feels real to me. Everyone stops and looks up from their quiz as I stand stupidly in the doorway.

  “Tardy,” Mr. Nocera says.

  “But I lost something,” I say.

  “You certainly did: ten minutes to work on your quiz.”

  “Something important,” I insist.

  “Check the lost-and-found during lunch.” He’s already scribbling in his attendance book. “Two latenesses make a detention, Miss Sanchez. I run a tight ship.”

  I look right through him and head to my seat, fuming. Darlene puts her foot out to stop me as I go down the aisle.

  “You’re not going to tell, are you?” she whispers. “If you are, leave me out of it, for God’s sake. I don’t want to be a witness.”

  Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes.

  “Get out of the way.” I push past and slide into my seat. How stupid does she think I am?

  My head is starting to pound. I’m too mad to take the quiz Mr. Nocera hands me. Instead, I put my head down and stare out the grates until I don’t see the bars of this cage anymore. There’s only one thing I know for sure: I have to get my necklace back. The question is: How?

  The guidance off
ice is in room 109, along the only sunny stretch of hall in this whole stupid school.

  I watch through the glass of the office door, where Darlene is on the phone, looking like the thirty-year-old she’d like to be. She’s a student aide there, getting credit instead of taking a study hall, which she refers to as a “waste of learning time.” Naturally, all the secretaries adore her. When she’s wearing the volunteer badge, she’s responsible, a little snippy, and has a good phone manner. A Mini-Me of their very own.

  It has taken some convincing to corrupt her. I had to swear I’d never use her as a witness, no matter what. Also that I’d help her with physics homework for the rest of the year.

  I pretend the bulletin board in the hall is interesting as I wait for her to get what I need. Our crime is taking even longer than I thought; I should already be in study hall, and any minute one of the wandering teachers on duty is going to find me and shake me down for a pass. It’s not like I can hide in the bathroom. Who knows what would happen if Yaqui’s crew found me in there?

  The board is crammed with posters. Registering for the draft. College visits. SAT dates and codes. A science academy for juniors and seniors at the community college. One poster catches my eye. It has a bulldog inside a circle with a diagonal red line. BULLY-FREE ZONE. STAND UP. SPEAK OUT, it says. I almost laugh out loud.

  “Here,” Darlene whispers, peeking out the door a few minutes later. “Yaqui Delgado’s schedule.” It’s tucked under an application for the science academy. She tugs at her skirt nervously as I look the paper over. “I hope you know I could get in real trouble for this. Accessing student records is, like, illegal for an aide.”

  “You’re a secret badass, though,” I say to make her feel better. “Thanks.”

  I look at the home address and try to place the street. If I’m right, it’s in the Bland — a shit hole if ever there was one. Figures. I scan the schedule for room numbers and classes. Yaqui and I don’t share a single teacher or classroom in this school, and yet I can’t get away from her. How does that happen? I fold the sheet carefully and slip it inside my backpack.