Mrs. DeJesus, Emilia is not feeling well again.
Over and over this happened. How many times had Emilia drifted back and forth, feeling the ground beneath her, the nurse’s hand on her forehead, the sky above, the sound of her mother’s voice, the crows crying.
And her mother would suddenly be there, slipping her hand into Emilia’s and saying, I’m here now. Let’s go.
But then there was that time when her mother got angry. When she pulled Emilia into the car a little harder. After speeding away from the school, Ma pulled over to the side of the road, brought the car to a jerking stop, and Emilia almost slid off the back seat, where she was lying down. Emilia could hear the slap of Ma’s hand as she hit the steering wheel over and over again, as she cried and asked, in a whisper, Why can’t you just be okay? Can’t you just be okay?
She didn’t say these things to Emilia. It was almost as if Ma had forgotten Emilia was even there as she said them to the wind blowing outside, carrying her words off to a world that wouldn’t listen and didn’t care.
But Emilia heard her. And she wondered why she wasn’t okay and if she ever would be. Her mother sounded so tired. Emilia hated being the reason Ma was so tired. Emilia opened her eyes, saw her mother resting her head on the steering wheel, holding on to it, knuckles white.
* * *
*
Emilia ran her hand up the back of her hair, playing with the fuzziness of her short new cut. She forced a smile. “I’m okay, Ma,” she said as she stood in the living room feeling like that small child, like a tiny plucked chicken. “Look, look, it’s blue. Can you see? Doesn’t it look cool? Tomás, look! I did it for fun. For tonight. I thought it would look cool. I just wanted something . . . different.”
“I thought you wanted everything to stay the same,” Ma said.
Ma searched Emilia’s face for the truth, but Emilia disguised it as much as she could. Why couldn’t Ma just trust her? Why couldn’t she believe her instead of always looking for signs of weakness? Emilia felt the sting of oncoming tears but refused to look away.
“Don’t make it into something it’s not, Ma,” Emilia said. “Please.”
She stared at her mother.
Prove you are stronger than she thinks, Emilia thought.
Finally, Ma nodded, wiped her eyes. “You have a date?” she asked. “Are you sure you’re . . . you want to go out?”
Emilia nodded. “Yeah, Ma. I want to go out. What am I going to do? Sit around here all the time, not live my life?”
Ma took a deep breath. Emilia saw how her mother shook her head. “It’s just that, I’m just worried about you. You have to . . .”
You have to talk! You have to say something, Emilia! Her mother’s words from the past came to her now.
Emilia felt like she was in the back seat of the car, felt the steady hum of the drive when Ma finally pulled away again, the sound of the turn signal and the dizzying sway of turning this way and that as they headed home.
Emilia sensed the floor moving, rocking her ever so slightly off balance. But she smiled. “I’m okay, Ma. It’ll be good for me to hang out with friends and just be normal.”
Life is beautiful. I can be okay.
Oh, how she needed this to be true.
Her mother nodded, even though she looked doubtful.
“I’m going to change out of these clothes. I’ve got all these little pieces of hair pricking me.” Emilia laughed a little. “Stop worrying about me,” she called down as she went up the stairs.
When she got to her bedroom, she sucked in her breath and quickly picked up the strands of hair she’d left there only hours earlier. She shoved them into her top drawer and turned to look at herself in the mirror again.
Be okay, she told herself. She smiled at the new person she saw there. Just a normal girl, getting ready for a date.
* * *
* * *
Tomás sat in the living room and Ma turned to him as if for some kind of reassurance. He felt torn. He wanted to be on Emilia’s side, he wanted to reassure his mother. But his sister, with her hair like that, looked just like a bird, her eyes larger, her head small and glossy.
And it scared him.
Ma stared at Tomás and he could almost read her mind.
Is she okay?
What’s happening?
How much time do I give her? How much space?
Should I lock her up in this house, never let her out of my sight?
What do we do? What do we do?
“Don’t worry, Ma,” Tomás said with more conviction than he felt. He remembered those first few months, the way his mother pushed for Emilia to speak. The way Emilia looked out with vacant eyes and seemed to get farther away from them. And how he would whisper to her when their mother wasn’t looking, It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything until you feel like it. And he’d squeeze her hand and she’d squeeze it back.
“If you push, you know she’ll—”
His mother looked at him. “If I push, she’ll come around.”
Tomás stared at his mother. She shook her head. “Okay, okay,” she said.
Maybe Emilia just wanted to see someone different when she looked in the mirror. If anyone could understand that, it was Tomás.
That’s all, he thought. Because the only other explanation was that Emilia wanted to look like a bird. That she was transforming into one right before their very eyes. That at night, he might wake up to her cawing, crying out into the cold air.
Tomás looked out the window.
What do we do? What do we do?
I Can’t Get over It
“I can’t get over it! You look so different,” Jane said as she looked at Emilia again. They were in the video store since Jane thought renting movies and getting pizza would be the perfect date night.
Emilia shrugged and played with her hair again as they continued looking at the rows of movies.
“Anthony will probably pick some wartime thing,” Jane whispered into Emilia’s ear as they walked the aisles. “He pretends it’s the action part he really likes, but he’s actually a sap. I think the part where the soldier comes home to his girl is always what gets him.”
Emilia looked over at Anthony, and she knew Jane was right. Anthony had a surprisingly soft heart.
Jane held her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell him I told you that.”
“I won’t,” Emilia said, finding herself, somehow, enjoying this moment.
Like two girlfriends, she thought. Just two ordinary girls out with their boyfriends.
The most normal thing in the world. She smiled at Jane and felt special somehow, knowing Jane wanted to be friends. She wondered if Jane was as lonely as Emilia was. For a moment, she pictured herself leaning over, whispering the truth into Jane’s ear.
“So what about you, sweet Emilia?” Jane said, picking up another movie and reading the back summary. “What kinds of movies do you like?”
“I don’t know. Not action, I guess.”
Still, Emilia couldn’t decide whether to like Jane or not. Just when Emilia found her laugh too loud and a little fake, Jane would say something sincere. And just when she thought Jane was cool, Jane said or did something to make Emilia wonder again. Like the way she smiled at Ian. Did she even know she did that? Or got so close to Emilia when she talked.
Jane shook her head. “I hate action, too. Okay, let me guess. Do you like foreign films, with subtitles?”
Emilia shrugged. “I’ve never watched a foreign film.”
“You haven’t? They’re pretty great. My mom used to take me to these film festivals back when I wasn’t a stripper . . .” Jane silently mouthed the word stripper and rolled her eyes. “I’ve brought such shame to her. Anyway, it was fun, you know. Going to theaters, listening to strange languages. Well, actually, I knew some of it because my mom hired a French n
anny who spoke to me in French when I was growing up. She thought Spanish was too common. Isn’t that so obnoxious? I mean, I’d probably get more use out of Spanish, but”—Jane shrugged—“c’est la vie. Vous ne recevez pas de choisir, ma douce Emilia. Or something like that.”
Jane laughed at herself and Emilia looked at her as Jane grabbed a movie. “Where’d you say you went to school?”
“Oh.” Jane rolled her eyes. “Pendulum Prep.” She said it like she couldn’t stand the words in her mouth. “Entitled bunch of snobs.”
“Wow,” Emilia said.
“You’ve heard of it?”
Emilia nodded. Of course she’d heard of it.
“Oh, this one,” Jane said. “You have to watch this one. We’ll get another one, too. What about a comedy? Do you like comedies?”
“Sure,” Emilia answered.
“Romance?”
“Yeah, romance, too.”
Jane nodded. “I know. I just love sweet stories. I mean, see, that’s what my mom doesn’t understand. Why does everything have to be so . . . highbrow. I like cheesy romance movies. I like renting movies and doing ordinary things. I like my guy in the service, waiting to come home to me.”
Emilia looked at Jane and wondered at the way Jane saw the world. The way she saw Emilia.
“Don’t tell anyone, but . . .” Jane came closer to Emilia’s ear and whispered, “I think he’s the one.” Jane looked over at Anthony. “We’ve actually talked about it. Did you know a lot of guys get married young in the army? And their wives get to go along with them wherever they’re stationed and it’s like a little wives’ club. They all live near one another and have little parties and game nights. Don’t you just think that’s so cute?” Jane smiles. “I think it’s absolutely perfect.”
Emilia couldn’t imagine anyone she knew actually getting married, even Jane and Anthony, who were slightly older. Anthony was nineteen and Jane, Emilia assumed, was about the same age. But Jane looked . . . hopeful. And Emilia didn’t want to crush her hopes, so she nodded.
“Sure, I can see you doing that,” Emilia said. And a part of her, for a moment, actually saw Jane and Anthony like that; she wished the best for them.
“Yeah,” Jane said, “I mean, I know it seems fast and all. But we haven’t exactly taken it slow. I slept with him the very first night I met him.” Jane looked at Emilia. “You probably think I’m déclassé, right? Low-class.”
“I don’t think that,” Emilia answered, resenting both Jane’s vocabulary lesson and the idea that Emilia was some naive little kid who would judge someone on their decisions about sex.
Jane studied Emilia’s face and nodded, seemingly satisfied with whatever she saw there, and continued. “It’s not like I go around doing that or anything,” she said. “I just . . . knew. I knew he was different.”
Emilia nodded. “You guys are sweet.”
“Really? You think so?”
“Really.”
Jane nodded in the direction of Ian and Anthony. “Good guys must run in the family, then, right?”
“Yeah,” Emilia said. “Must.”
Ian and Anthony were laughing over something. Ian saw Emilia looking his way and their eyes locked; in that moment it felt like they were by themselves. She held his gaze as long as possible, and let herself think for a moment of the two of them, married.
“You guys have something real, too,” Jane said.
Emilia nodded and picked a movie off the shelf. She tried to imagine Ian at the end of a church aisle, waiting for her. The two of them in a little apartment. Late night with friends they’d just made. Emilia smiled. Was it possible? It would actually be sweet. But somehow, it seemed so unrealistic to her.
Emilia looked over at Jane, who had pulled a lollipop out of her coat pocket and unwrapped it, and was now twirling and sucking on it. For her, whatever she wanted was already a reality. It was only a matter of time.
She wondered about the differences between her and Jane. Jane, who’d had the chance to go to fancy schools and spoke French, who had probably been abroad for a year like most Pendulum Prep students. Who had . . . so much. But chose to dance in some strip bar on the other side of town. Jane, who, if she put on the right clothes, which Emilia had no doubt hung in the far corner of her closet, could easily pal around with her former friends, who were probably at prestigious colleges. But instead she was here. With Emilia. Telling her all about where she was really from, but how she chose to be here instead.
Jane picked up a movie and read the description. “Anyway, enough about me,” she said as she lowered her voice and inched closer to Emilia. “Tell me about you and Ian . . . Have you two, you know . . . ?” Jane smiled slyly and sucked on her lollipop.
Emilia knew what she meant.
“Ummmm, well . . . no . . .” She’d never talked to anybody about her and Ian. The few girlfriends she’d had in elementary school scattered after that day in third grade. And when she came back to middle school, they’d only ever felt like acquaintances. They were okay, but they never felt like friends ever again and she knew she didn’t really belong with them.
But now Jane was asking. And she was open and direct and experienced. And she seemed like she really did want to be Emilia’s friend. So, maybe, maybe she isn’t that bad. And maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to talk to her about it.
“Are you scared?” Jane asked, her face full of understanding as they kept walking down the aisle.
Emilia shrugged. “No, not exactly . . .”
Did she really want to explain this to Jane?
Maybe she could talk to Jane, but she couldn’t tell her about anything without explaining the past. And she didn’t want to talk about that.
“Don’t be scared,” Jane said gently. “How far have you two gone?”
Emilia shrugged and looked away without answering.
“Okay, I’m guessing you haven’t done much. But obviously he loves you and you love him, and there’s nothing wrong with showing that. And sure, sex is a little scary the first time, but you can do other things if you’re not ready.” Jane looked at her lollipop. “Like this,” she said, laughing and her eyes widening.
Emilia laughed, too. Soon, they were cracking up, even though Emilia still didn’t know what to make of Jane. Could they ever be friends? A few other people looked over at them, and Emilia looked down. But Jane didn’t care. It was as if she could pretend everyone else wasn’t there. As if she were above them somehow. She didn’t care if anyone looked over at her, because they would never say anything to her. It was as if they recognized in her something, or someone who could do whatever she pleased. Something they prized. Nobody would ever harm her.
That was unfair. Emilia knew it was. But she couldn’t help feeling this way. Because somewhere, deep in her gut, she knew it was true.
“What are you girls laughing at?” Anthony said, coming up behind them.
“Oh, nothing, I was just telling Emilia how delightful lollipops can be,” Jane said. She met Ian’s eyes and laughed. Emilia noticed how he looked away.
“Let’s go, then,” Anthony said.
They stopped by the supermarket, picked up junk food, and drove back to Anthony’s.
Jane immediately put one of the frozen pizzas in the oven and made microwave popcorn while they argued about which of the three movies they should watch first.
“A fucking foreign film?” Anthony said when it was the first one Jane wanted to watch.
“I got it for Emilia,” she said, and started the movie anyway. Jane curled up on the couch next to Emilia, the popcorn between them.
Anthony announced he was going outside for a smoke, and Ian followed.
From the window, Emilia could see Anthony and Ian talking. She watched as Anthony offered Ian one and was surprised to see Ian accept it and smoke it easily. It wasn’t a big deal, but it
made her wonder who Ian was when she wasn’t around. Right now, from here, he seemed different somehow, and yet, the same. The Ian she’d always known, but not. He and Anthony looked like army buddies, laughing and talking, smoke coming out of their mouths from the cigarettes and the cold.
“Hey, come here,” Jane said suddenly, clutching Emilia’s hand and leading her to the kitchen. She unzipped her purse. “Lemme see something.” She retrieved a tube of lipstick and applied it to Emilia’s lips. It felt strange to have someone so close to her, and Emilia resisted the urge to keep pulling away. When she was done, Jane admired her work.
“You’re a fucking stunner, you know that?” she told Emilia. “Look.” She took out a compact and opened it.
Emilia looked at herself, at the same purple color on her lips that Jane wore, and couldn’t decide if she loved it or felt stupid.
“It’s cool. But . . . ,” she told Jane.
Jane shook her head. “Yes, that’s it. It’s cool. Period. Jesus, Emilia. Don’t be one of those girls who don’t know that the guys fall all over themselves because you’re beautiful and you don’t even realize how amazing you are. Don’t be afraid.”
Jane was wrong. Emilia could tell when a guy looked at her, when he stared at her body. She could feel it a mile away.
“You shouldn’t be shy about your beauty or your body, Emilia. There’s nothing to be afraid of. The trick is to be in control. It’s your fucking body. Nobody owns you. Nobody should have that kind of power over you. Unless you let them.”
Emilia understood what Jane was saying. But it bothered her that Jane thought everyone had the luxury of thinking that way. I should be allowed to be carefree, Emilia thought. I should be allowed to make out with my boyfriend without thinking of the past.
I should be allowed to be like you, Jane. But I’m not. And I can’t. So fuck you, Jane.
All Emilia said was, “You’re right,” without going into it as she looked out at Ian. He threw his cigarette on the ground.
The Fall of Innocence Page 18