Merci Suárez Changes Gears

by Meg Medina

  I grab chalk and the shears marked NO TOCAR POR FAVOR on the handles for the benefit of the twins, who like to play barbershop on each other. I bring them back to Abuela.

  “Not too loose, Mamá,” Tía says. “They’ll stretch out.”

  Abuela arches her brow. “Who’s the expert here, Inés? Turn.”

  Tía is wearing heels for the fitting. They’re her dance shoes for when she takes the free dance class at the Tango Palace downtown. She clears her throat. “Before I forget, Mamá,” she says, “I made another doctor appointment for Lolo.”

  Abuela marks a V at the back seam of Tía’s pants. “Appointment for what? Dr. Gupta just saw him in March.” She looks up and puts her hand on her heart. “Does that burn look like it’s going to give him skin cancer?”

  “Can we be reasonable?” Tía’s eyes drift over to me and she pauses. “It’s that . . . Enrique, Ana, and I discussed it. We want to stay on top of things, that’s all.”

  My ears perk up. Stay on top of what things? Is this what they were talking about in our kitchen last week?

  Abuela’s mouth is tight as she pins the waist. “Well, I hope you enjoyed your private conversation.” She stabs a few more pins through the denim. “If you’d bother to ask me, I’d tell you that all these appointments are pointless. What do these doctors do? Nothing, except make you sicker with worry.”

  The air around us all suddenly feels prickly, but I don’t want to miss anything. I pretend to study all the family pictures Abuela keeps tacked up crooked on the walls. She’s taken pictures of our first day of school since Roli was six. Abuela is a terrible photographer, though. Almost every shot is out of focus or missing someone’s head.

  “Mamá . . .” Tía says, sighing.

  But Abuela’s on a roll, and her voice is getting louder. “And why doesn’t anybody make house calls anymore? How are two ancianos supposed to get to all these appointments? Those silly shuttles that never come on time? And I don’t even want to start to tell you about the cost. They charge you the eye on your face, and then they use it to pay for their fancy lobbies with waterfalls and fish tanks. ¡Qué bobería! They should come to their patients and forget all that nonsense! I tell you, there’s no respect for how people our age —”

  “Roli can drive you if Enrique or I can’t,” Tía says, exasperated. “It’s just a mile.”

  Abuela’s mouth drops open and she clutches her chest. “Roli? Do you even love us?” she asks. “I would be safer to ask Lolo to take me on his bike handlebars.”

  OK, that might be true. For once, though, I’m grateful Roli isn’t here for this.

  “Lolo needs to go to the doctor.” Tía’s voice is suddenly a heavy stick. I can almost hear what she doesn’t say. And that’s final.

  Abuela glares at her. I wonder if there will ever be a day when I boss Mami or Papi the way Tía is doing to Abuela. I can’t even imagine. It makes the world feel upside down.

  “Well, we’re busy this week,” Abuela says, seething. “We have an event at Merci’s school. It’s the day for grandparents. And we’ve been looking forward to it.”

  Tía cocks her head. “That’s next Wednesday, isn’t it, Merci? I saw the flyer on your fridge.”

  I nod, stuck in the middle. Abuela doesn’t like being bossed, but at the same time, Tía is just trying to help. I don’t know whose side to go on, so I just stand there, tongue-tied.

  “We have four other days to choose from,” Tía says. “Pick one.”

  Abuela ignores her. “Step out of the pants, Inés,” she says.

  Tía sighs and slips out of the jeans carefully so she doesn’t get scratched.

  “Call the boys for me, Merci,” she tells me quietly. “It’s getting late, and they have school tomorrow.”

  I put down the pins and hurry out, only too glad to get away from this conversation.

  When I get to the kitchen, I find a mess. Three plates with sandwich crusts and half-drunk glasses of orange juice are still on the table. The jar of mayonnaise and the sliced ham are room temperature, too. If Roli could see this, we’d get a lesson in botulism.

  Lolo is right outside the window, though, pulling up the last of the summer flowers that are scorched and waterlogged. The twins are with him, too. Soaked head to toe, they’re filling a bucket with a hose. Paint rollers and brushes lie at their feet.

  I dump the dishes in the sink and run the water to soak them. Then I crank open the window and call out, “And what are you two doing?”

  “Painting the house,” Axel says, dipping his brush into the bucket of water. “Can’t you see?”

  Tomás rolls as high as his skinny arms can reach and leaves a long dark streak of water on the stucco. “It’s invisible paint.”

  “So you can’t see it,” Axel says.

  “Unless you’re magic,” Tomás says.

  “And you’re not magic,” Axel adds.

  “Your mom says to finish,” I tell them. “It’s getting late, and you have school.”

  Tomás gives me a loud raspberry as a reply.

  Lolo looks up at him. “We talked about this, Tomás. Is that a way to be a caballero?” he scolds.

  I rinse off the dishes and put them in the drain board. Then I wipe the crumbs to the floor, and collect the mayo and ham to put them back in the fridge.

  But when I pull open the refrigerator door, I find something odd. An enormous pair of round eyeglasses is sitting in the deli meat drawer.

  Lolo’s.

  A voice inside me tells me to close the drawer and pretend I haven’t seen them. But then I think of Abuela, and what she’ll say if she finds them before Lolo does.

  I reach for the glasses.

  The frames are so large and the glass so thick. They’re silly, even ugly — especially scratched as they are. I take mine off and try them on, marveling as the room loses its shape and tilts on its ear. It’s weird how we need such different things to see. I take them off and pocket them before heading outside.

  “Have you been looking for something, by any chance?” I blink my eyes a bunch of times to give Lolo a clue.

  “¿Quién, yo?”

  “Sí, tú.”

  I pull Lolo’s glasses from my pocket and hand them over.

  A frown clouds his face, but it passes quickly. He chuckles and puts them on, wiping off the foggy lenses. “I thought things were looking fuzzy.”

  He doesn’t ask me where they were or why they’re so cold.

  I don’t dare ask why they were in the refrigerator. The question sours in my mouth as he turns back to yanking the rest of the tattered plants. It’s like there’s a crossing guard holding a big stop sign in front of me.

  Instead, I swat at mosquitos buzzing near my legs and notice several welts on Lolo’s neck and arms where the bugs have been feasting. “You’re all bitten up. Abuela’s going to fuss.” I move his fingers to his neck so he can feel the welts. “See? There’s spray inside. You want me to get it?”

  “I’ll go.” His eyes flit to Axel and Tomás. “Start cleaning up, men,” he calls to them.

  I wait until the screen door slams behind him before I walk over to the twins. They’re completely involved in their game, their eyes serious as they move their brushes up and down in their make-believe job. I used to love to play this way. Roli and me on a spaceship made of sofa pillows, on a cardboard raft crossing the Amazon. Now, I don’t know why, but the sight of the twins playing makes me angry. It’s silly and childish. It’s all just pretend.

  “It’s just water, you know.”

  They ignore me and keep working, but I can’t stop myself from wanting to ruin their game. An idea flashes through my head, and even though I know it’s not true, I want it to be.

  “It’s not nice to take Lolo’s stuff and hide it,” I say, louder. “Especially not his glasses. He can’t see well without them.”

  Tomás is the first to turn. He looks at me blankly. “I didn’t hide Lolo’s glasses,” he says.

  “I didn’t
, too,” Axel says.

  I barely hear them for the buzz in my ears and the satisfaction at bothering them. They’re the reason I’m not playing soccer, so it’s hard not to be upset with them. And who’s to say that they didn’t take Lolo’s glasses? It’s not so far-fetched. They’ve fibbed plenty of times about things they’ve broken, haven’t they? Tía Inés’s vase. The porcelain girl with the water buckets Abuela kept. Roli’s model space shuttle. Who can believe them?

  I give them my warden look, growing tall. “You hid them in the refrigerator, and it’s a mean trick.” The accusation slips easily from my mouth.

  “Lolo! Merci is bothering us!” Tomás shouts at the top of his voice and then turns back to me. “Go away.” He flicks his paintbrush in my direction like it’s a magic wand he’s using against an ogre. Dirty water splashes my face, and before I can really think, I grab it out of his hand roughly and give him a shake.

  “Quit it, liar!”

  He balls his fists and hits my thighs, crying. A second later, Axel is in a snotty heap, too.

  “¿Pero, qué pasó?” Lolo comes out of the house, buttoning his shirt.

  Tía Inés comes out the door right behind him. “Quiet down. Any minute the neighbors are going to call the cops!”

  “It’s nothing,” I mutter.

  “It’s Merci’s fault!” Axel shouts. “She’s mean!”

  Tomás sucks his thumb and gives me dagger looks in agreement.

  “Ya, ya, ya,” Lolo tells them, pulling them into his arms. “Let’s all calm down. No one is mean. What happened?”

  For a second, I don’t know what to say. I started it, of course. I know that’s true and that it’s wrong. But when I glance at Lolo, I see his crooked glasses and that he’s buttoned his shirt all wrong, the way the twins sometimes do. The sight of him makes my temper flash all over again.

  “I said it’s nothing,” I insist. “They’re tired and cranky, that’s all! They’re being their usual bratty selves.” My eyelid twitches and starts lowering.

  “Liar!” Axel says.

  “Merci, don’t call them brats,” Tía Inés says. “You’re a lot older than they are. Too old to upset them like this.”

  “Then find someone else to watch them,” I say. “I’m not your servant!”

  “Mercedes.”

  Papi’s voice makes me jump. It rumbles under me like thunder across the yard. He’s stepped out of our house in his undershirt to see what’s happening. Mami is right behind him.

  “What’s all this about?” she says.

  “I hate watching them,” I shout. “I hate watching everybody!”

  And then, because hot tears have sprung to my eyes, I give the twins’ water bucket a hard kick and march across the yard for home.

  THE UPSIDE OF BEING GROUNDED for a week is hard to find, except maybe that you start to appreciate any kind of fun, even if it’s in the form of a homework project.

  “Guess what? You’ve left Seaward Pines today,” Ms. Tannenbaum tells us.

  Oh, if only . . . The girls who made the soccer team had their names announced this morning. I had to put my head down.

  “Today, you’re all in scribe school instead!”

  We’ve started a unit on hieroglyphics. She holds out an old floppy hat and walks around the room, telling us to pick a name. “This will be your new pen pal for tonight’s assignment. You’ll have to write this person a note using the writing of ancient Egyptians.” She points to the stack of curly “papyrus,” markers, and colored pencils near her desk and hands us a copy of the codes to use like a Rosetta stone.

  I glance at Michael’s open backpack again while Ms. Tannenbaum circles the room. I’ve been trying to give him my official sincere apology letter all day, but there hasn’t been a time when he’s been alone. People are all over him like he’s a celebrity, thanks in part to the two stitches in his lip. At his locker. In the lunchroom. In the hall. His lip isn’t a balloon anymore, but you can see the scab and bruises, even from across the room. Naturally, everyone has been making a fuss over him, especially Edna. What I wouldn’t give to have hit a line drive at her instead. Her first question to him was, “So, are your parents going to sue Merci Suárez?” Then she mooned over his purplish chin. “My dad’s a doctor. He could look at that, you know.”

  “I busted his lip, Edna,” I told her. “Not his toenails.”

  “Ha.” Hannah covered her mouth when Edna turned to glare.

  Anyway, I’m glad he’s not brain-damaged. I don’t think he’s mad at me either. I overheard him tell Edna that his mom took his phone away for the whole weekend because Miss McDaniels told her that he had been breaking school rules when he got hurt. I hope that’s why he didn’t answer my message.

  I look at my pen pal assignment: Lena, who sits in the front row and cracks her knuckles. I don’t really know her because this is our only class together. Plus, at lunch, she usually reads by herself outside. She got a spiky haircut over the weekend, though, with the ends dyed blue. She looks a little like a hedgehog.

  I slide the envelope with my apology under my arm to hide it and walk to the front of the room. Edna glances up as I brush past her to get my papyrus. I search in the plastic marker bin, grab a couple, then take the long way back to my seat, dropping my note in the outer pouch of Michael’s bag.

  Lena is the only one who seems to notice. When she catches my eye, though, she looks away.

  “What are you doing?” Roli asks me. It’s hot in our room. Mami sometimes turns off the air-conditioning when the electricity bill has been too high or when the calendar says it’s supposed to be fall, regardless of what the temperature is. Which means the room where I’m serving my sentence is hot and sticky. Plus, a mosquito the size of a small bat has found its way around the screen, too.

  “Writing a letter, like most incarcerated people.”

  I wipe the sweat off my neck. I’m in shorts and a tank top, and my markers are spread all around me on the desk. For once, I claimed the space before Roli could hog it. I pushed back his stack of papers, his brain model, and the glass-encased fossils so I could work.

  He picks up one of scrolls and scans it. So far, I am on the third page of my hieroglyphics message. “Writing a letter or a book?” he says.

  “The pictures take up a lot of room,” I say.

  He tosses himself on his bed and sighs as he stares up at the ceiling. “Mami says to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  He pauses. “School and stuff.”

  “Well, don’t.” I color in the wings on the owl that stands for M.

  He stays quiet for a while, but then he props himself up on his elbows. “Remember when I was the embalmer in Ms. Tannenbaum’s class?”

  “Is this the start of a ‘talk’?” I say.

  “But do you remember?”

  I look up. He was new to Seaward that year. Abuela sewed white towels together so he could wrap himself around his middle. She braided a long strip to tie around his head, too. He was bare-chested and wore sandals; he carried Papi’s chisel and hammer. He rimmed his eyes with Tía’s eyeliner. When he told the audience about preparing for the afterlife, we all believed him.

  “Remember that kid who played the dead guy?” I ask. “Scary.”

  “James Tucker. He could lie still as an iguana. I think he fell asleep.”

  “And then there was your brain hook thing.” I shudder. It was only Abuela’s crocheting needle, but when Roli described extracting brains through nostrils, it seemed too real. One of the student teachers got faint, in fact. Mami had to help her to a chair.

  “OK, that might have been a mistake.” He nudges me with his smelly foot.

  I put the finishing touch on my letter to Lena and hand the pages over to him. “What do you think? Can you read it?”

  I start to give him the code sheet, but Roli puts up his hand to stop me. He loves puzzles, for one thing. Plus, his memory is a steel trap. I watch as his lips move over the hieroglyphs.


  He hands it back. “Maybe reconsider the part where you say her haircut makes her forehead look smaller.”

  The next day in social studies, Ms. Tannenbaum hands out the notes we’ve written to our mystery pen pals. They’re tied in scrolls and labeled with the name of the person they’re for.

  “You are to read the letter addressed to you and write the translation underneath,” she says. “Your quiz grade will consist of two things: the effort you made in constructing the letter to your classmate, and your accuracy in decoding the message you have received. I will be walking by with my grade book in twenty minutes.”

  David puts his head on his desk. “Nobody said it had to be long,” he groans. “Did anybody say that?”

  “You may begin,” Ms. Tannenbaum says.

  I check out Lena from the corner of my eye as she starts working. Then I untie my scroll. It’s a really short note, so I immediately think it’s from David. But there’s a five-dollar bill and a pouch of fruit snacks taped to the bottom. I freeze and pull the snacks and money into my lap as I start to decode. I’m not as fast as Roli, but I unravel the meaning quickly even though the same symbol is used for both E and I, which makes it tricky.