Bulletproof Vest

by Maria Venegas

  “For twenty days we had him in that hospital, and then one day he told me he was thirsty. He hadn’t asked for anything, yet suddenly he wanted a drink of water, so I went down the hall to find a nurse, or anyone who could give me a glass of water, and when I was making my way back to his room, he walked right past me. I felt him go by in the corridor, and that’s how I knew that he was gone.”

  7

  LOVE, SWEET LOVE

  DESPITE OUR INITIAL ENCOUNTER, Sophia and I end up being good friends. It’s Saturday night, and we are leaving a party. We step out onto the porch when we run into a tall, dark-haired guy whom I’ve never seen before.

  “You were in that dance show, weren’t you?” he says, smiling at me.

  “Yeah,” I say, as the screen door slams shut behind him, leaving Sophia out on the porch. Earlier that night, there had been a dance show at the high school and Sophia and I had performed in a few of the numbers.

  “You were really good,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I say, and there is something about the way he’s looking at me that is frightening and exciting all at once.

  “Are you leaving?” he asks.

  “Curfew,” I shrug, though I have no curfew, as I don’t even have permission to be out, but Sophia has to be home by midnight.

  “I’m Dominick,” he says, extending his hand to me. Our hands slide into each other, and the warmth of his hand in mine makes me want to stay there, in the doorway, for the rest of the night. “So?” he says, still holding my hand. “What’s your name?”

  “Maria,” I say.

  “Ah, Maria, like in West Side Story,” he says.

  “Uh-huh,” I nod. Someone comes pushing through the doorway, and he takes a step closer to me. I catch a whiff of his cologne, and oh how I wish I could stop time.

  “Maria!” Sophia yells. “Are you coming or not?”

  “That’s my ride,” I say.

  He moves aside, still smiling, as I slip my hand away and go out the door.

  On Monday morning I walk into my first-period class, Spanish 203, and the minute I sit down, the pretty Italian girl that I’ve often helped with her homework turns to face me.

  “My cousin Dominick really liked you,” she says.

  “Dominick is your cousin?” I say, my cheeks flushing at the very sound of his name.

  She nods.

  “After you left the party, he did not stop talking about you.”

  “Really?” I say, feeling like I have just struck gold, because I have not stopped thinking about him all weekend. I kept wondering where he had come from, and whether or not I’d ever run into him again.

  “He’s back at school now, but he’ll be coming home for the summer in a few weeks,” she says. “If you want, I can get you his number.”

  Dominick, I soon find out, had graduated from the other high school in town the year before. He and his girlfriend had been the prom king and queen, and though everyone thought they’d get married, they had broken up soon after they went off to college. I get his number and leave him a message, and when he comes home for spring break, he calls me back and invites me out for dinner. I tell him Wednesday night is good, mainly because I know my mother will be at the prayer meeting at her church until late.

  On Wednesday night, he picks me up in a rusty blue hatchback and takes me to the Village Squire, one of the two fancier restaurants in town. The hostess walks us to a booth, the waitress comes over, and he orders a beer. She cards him. He pulls out his wallet and hands her an ID.

  “What kind of beer would you like?” she asks, handing his ID back to him. He orders an Amstel Light, and I order an ice tea.

  “It’s my brother Donnie.” He hands me the ID once the waitress has left, and tells me he has three older brothers and one older sister. All five of them have names that start with D: Donnie, David, Dean, and Donna.

  The waitress brings our drinks. He orders a steak, and though the knot in my stomach has wrung the hunger from me, I choose the shrimp Alfredo. I’ve never had shrimp Alfredo before, but I like the way it sounds. The minute the waitress is gone he slides his beer across the table. We both glance over our shoulders, I take a sip, place it back, he takes a swig and slides it back to the center so that it comes to rest between us. In between sips and swigs, he asks about my family, and I tell him my parents are divorced, even though they never legally divorced, they’re just separated, but I like that word—divorced. It sounds more civilized. Those who have divorced have hired attorneys and gone to court, they have stayed within the confines of the law. People who are divorced, I assume, don’t threaten to kill their spouses, or their in-laws.

  We had heard that my father had been making the rounds at the taverns in Valparaíso, saying that the next time he ran into my uncle, he was going to put a bullet in him—use him as bait, so that my mother would be forced to take a trip to Mexico. The rumors didn’t frighten me much. They felt like news from a distant star. Like even if something were to happen, we would be too far away to be affected by it, like somehow we would be immune to it. And then we received the first phone call, and we all sat in the living room, staring at each other, at the floor, back at each other, unable to speak in full sentences. He shot. How? In the face? Why? It was despicable—beyond comprehension. My mother had wanted to go down right away, but her family told her not to, as my father was MIA, and what if she went down and he did something to her as well? Twenty days later, we got the second phone call, and she was on the first flight bound for Zacatecas. When she returned, she spent countless hours, entire days, even, locked away in her bedroom as the pile of dirty laundry spilled from her bed onto the floor until the rug was no longer visible. If to kill her is what he wanted, then he had succeeded on some level. As far as I’m concerned, the bullet that killed my uncle also killed my father. After that, my father was as good as dead to me.

  Our food comes, and the minute the waitress sets my plate down in front of me, I realize I’ve made a mistake. The long strands of pasta are coiled over and around each other and oozing with a white creamy cheese sauce, a few pink shrimp scattered throughout. There’s no easy way to eat it without making a mess. Dominick asks for Worcestershire sauce and another beer. I move the strands of pasta around with my fork and pluck a few shrimps out of the mess, not daring to eat a single strand of pasta in front of him.

  When we leave the restaurant, it’s already dark out. He tells me that David, his eldest brother, is the manager at Tavern on the Green, which is by far the fanciest place in town. It sits right on the river, and there is a small gazebo out in back where we can sit and watch the boats go by, and do I want to go grab a drink with him? Although I don’t want to leave his side, I make up some school night excuse and he drives me home.

  Before our next date, I go into Mary’s purse, open her wallet, take her ID, and go from sixteen to twenty-five overnight. That summer, we spend countless nights drinking in the gazebo with his older brothers, and with everyone else who is home from college, as well as those who never bothered with college, the ones who stayed in town, knowing that someday they’d be taking over their father’s plumbing or roofing business. They are all very impressed with my high tolerance, with how I can keep up with the guys—one for one. I tell them it’s in my blood, though I don’t tell them how it got there. How he who is still MIA put it there. It had been four months since he had killed my uncle, and he still hadn’t resurfaced.

  “Where do you think you’ll be in ten years?” Dominick asks me one evening when we are sharing a pitcher of beer and cracking through peanut shells while we wait for our pizza at Verducci’s.

  “I don’t know, you?”

  “I’m not sure,” he says. “Maybe I’ll move out west, or maybe I’ll still be here. You probably won’t be in this town anymore.” He wipes the peanut shells off our table and onto the floor. “You’ll probably go off to college and become an elite sorority girl, and end up moving to the big city and marrying some rich guy,” he says.


  “What’s a sorority?” I say, cracking a peanut shell between my fingers and popping the peanut in my mouth.

  “You know, a sorority? Like fraternities?” he says, searching my face. “Colleges have them, they’re social clubs.”

  “Oh,” I say, though I still don’t get it.

  “What about me?” he says, taking my glass and filling it up. “Where do you think I’ll be in ten years?”

  “Who knows,” I say. “I could see you still living in this town, and you’ll probably be married and have a few kids by then, and maybe you’ll still be doing carpentry on the side, and have a bit of a beer gut, and be balding like your dad,” I say, taking a sip of my beer.

  “Gee, thanks,” he says, half smiling and half frowning, trying to figure out if I’m joking or not. “Is that really what you think?” he asks, and I nod, oblivious to how I’ve offended him.

  Our pizza arrives, piping hot on a steel platter, the cheese melting around the sausage, green peppers, and mushrooms. Dominick puts a slice on a plate and hands it to me. I pick it up and the cheese oozes over the side, burning my tongue and making a mess, but I don’t care anymore, I’ve gotten over my nerves. Once we are finished, he pays the tab, as he always does, and on the way home he pulls over in a dimly lit street and turns off the lights and the engine, and pulls me close like he always does. I really like Dominick. I like the way he puts his arms around me and kisses me, as his hands tug at my silk blouse, and un-tuck it from my denim shorts, his fingers slowly undoing each button, and then his warm hands are traveling up my back, searching, locating, and unsnapping the hinge to my padded bra. But the minute his hands start trying to unzip my shorts, I stop them mid-flight. I can practically hear my mother saying: Una señorita que no es virgencita, no sirve para nada. Though I don’t believe that a young lady who is no longer a virgin is good for nothing, I do think that I’ll wait to do that until I get married, or at least until I fall in love.

  One of those nights, after going out for dinner, we pick up a movie and I suggest we watch it at my house, since Mary recently had the basement renovated and we now have a family room with a large television down there, plus, my mother is at one of her late-night prayer vigils and won’t be home until well after midnight. The movie isn’t even halfway through when neither of us is watching it anymore. Our lips are locked and our limbs are intertwined.

  “¿Qué está haciendo ese viejo aquí?” The sound of my mother’s voice practically sends me flying off the couch. I didn’t hear her footsteps coming down the stairs, and I definitely didn’t hear her car pulling into the driveway, and now she’s standing in the doorway, demanding to know why “that man” is in the house.

  “Oh, is this your mother?” Dominick asks, smiling and standing up. He goes to extend his hand to her, but seems to think better of it.

  “Sácalo de aquí inmediatamente,” she says, demanding that I tell him to leave at once. I refuse to kick him out, tell her that’s just plain rude, and that she could at least let us finish watching our movie. But she insists that I tell him to leave, saying that this is a great example I’m setting for my younger sister. Bringing a man to the house and letting him kiss me.

  “What’s she saying?” Dominick asks, his smile fading.

  “You have to go,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You,” my mother says, pointing at him. “Out a here.” She points to the door.

  “Why is she so mad?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry, but you have to go,” I say, making my way to the door and opening it for him. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I say, as he walks past me.

  After he leaves, my mother accuses me of being everything under the sun, the moon, and the stars.

  Things between Dominick and me are never the same after that. He doesn’t invite me out for dinner anymore, and eventually he stops calling altogether. I assume it’s a combination of being offended by my mother and frustrated with my unzippable zipper.

  8

  WE CALL POLICE

  THE OUTDOOR MOVIE THEATER is packed with cars and trucks, windows fogging up while hands search for buttons, snaps, and zippers—no one really paying attention to the movie, to the scene that is unfolding against the darkening sky. In the subdivision across the street, you are hanging out in Bradley’s basement. His parents are out of town for the weekend, and so he’s having a few people over. It’s not really a party, just the usual crew—you, Sophia, the older guys you’ve been hanging out with for the past two years, and him—he’s not a part of your group, but he’s here because he’s a friend of a friend.

  You are sitting on top of the washing machine, breathing in the dank air while the music blares from the speakers behind you. Another shot comes your way. What is it? Number five? Six? It’s number who-knows. It’s number who-cares. It’s Friday night. It’s your final semester in high school, and come fall you’ll be leaving this small town for good and there is nothing your mother or anyone can do to stop you. A few days ago, you had received a letter in the mail from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign—your first choice. You had torn into the envelope the minute it was in your hands, searching the letter until you saw that one word: Congratulations. Though you had gotten the urge to go running through the house screaming: “I won, I won, I won.” You didn’t, because no one would have cared. Instead, you called Sophia, who had received her acceptance letter from U of I earlier that month.

  “Cheers,” they say, clinking your glass, and though you are seeing double and the music sounds like a loud drone, you don’t want to wimp out now. You’ve always been able to keep up with the guys, impressing them with your naturally high tolerance. You knock the shot back and it burns as it goes down.

  Through half-mast eyelids, you notice the couch at the far end of the basement, and you think that maybe you’ll lie down for a bit, until Sophia is ready to go home. You push yourself off the washing machine and your legs feel heavy as they move, one foot in front of the other, and you hear someone asking if you’re okay as you walk away, and you think, yes, I’m fine, I’m just going to place my cheek against that cushion there and close my eyes for a bit. An hour later, Sophia tries to wake you when she’s ready to go, but she can’t get you to budge.

  “Leave her,” Bradley tells her, and says he’ll drive you home in the morning.

  Sophia leaves. Everyone leaves. Except for him. Not Bradley. The other one. The one whose name you don’t even know. Or maybe he did leave along with everyone else. Perhaps it hadn’t even crossed his mind until he was about halfway home, and it was then that his mind went racing back to that dark basement, thinking, that girl. And perhaps it was then that he turned his car around already knowing what he wanted to do, and so he killed the lights before turning into Bradley’s driveway again. Or maybe he had been calculating the whole time. Keeping tabs on your drinks while he hovered just beyond the laughter, watching you knock them back, waiting and hoping and practically salivating when he saw your body hit the couch, and so when everyone else drove away, he lingered.

  By then the big screen must have been dark, and all the cars and trucks had vacated the lot, leaving nothing but trash in their wake, and perhaps he climbed into his car and lit a cigarette, not hurrying with it, waiting for Bradley to turn off the lights, and once enough time had passed, he stepped back out onto the driveway, being careful not to slam the car door, before going to the house and slowly turning the knob, hoping that it wouldn’t be locked. It wasn’t. No need to lock the doors in a relatively safe neighborhood, where everyone looks out for one another, where people have signs on their front windows that read: WE CALL POLICE. He entered the dark house and went down the stairs.

  A few weeks later, you’re late. And you’re never late. Your cycle has always been very regular.

  “I think I’m pregnant,” you tell Sophia while driving home from the nursing home where you both work.

  “That’s impossible,” she says
. “You can’t get pregnant the first time. You’re probably just stressed. Wait until next month, I’m sure it will come.”

  She seems so positive it will come that somehow her certainty is reassuring, but still, you buy a pregnancy test. The instructions are simple enough: A dash means no, and a plus means yes. You lock the bathroom door, pull out the kit, pee on the tip, and wait. Outside, the sun is shining and the snow is slowly melting and dripping off the wooden rail on the back deck. You look at the kit, at the clear screen, and watch as the blue plus sign materializes. It’s like watching a dead body float to the surface of a serene lake, and once you’ve seen it, you must deal with it—dispose of it before anyone finds out.

  You take a deep breath, thinking, okay, I will deal with this:

  One.

  Step.

  At.

  A.

  Time.

  You pull out the phone book and call a few clinics in the area.

  “Are you sure you want to get rid of it?”

  “There are other options, you know.”

  “Abortion is a sin.”

  “Have you considered adoption?”

  “Jesus loves you.”

  The voices on the other end start sounding like your mother, and you hang up. Jesus may love you, but He certainly can’t help you now. In fact, you’re starting to think that maybe this is His doing, His way of dealing with you, the same way that taking your brother was His way of dealing with your father. Maybe this is your punishment for drinking too much, for being a rebellious daughter, for taking after your father.

  If there is one thing you know for certain, it’s that your mother can’t find out, because not only will she blame you for it, she will force you to keep it. The same way she made your sister Roselia keep hers when she was sixteen and the twenty-five-year-old guy she was dating got her pregnant. “I better not catch that son of a bitch coming around here,” your father said, when he found out that his daughter had been knocked up by a hallelujah. By then, Roselia had already moved out of the house and soon she and the guy got married at your mother’s church, and everyone attended the wedding except your father, and then the baby came and everything was all right—until it wasn’t.