Mama was always inventing funny things, like her panty-hose baby. But Halloween, like the full moon, brought out the wackiest in her. Poor Lucy had to go as a rainbow raspa the year before, sporting a hairy wig that Mama dyed every color in creation. Lucy could hardly walk, all taped up in a giant cardboard cone.
What I liked best about Halloween was candy.
The year before, Berta had told me that she’d gone to the other side of town and found Halloween heaven, where she got whole chocolate candy bars and quarters. I didn’t believe her, of course. But then she opened her bag and showed me. It was amazing!
I started in the barrio. I got a small skull with my name on it at the yellow house, a cucumber at the pink one, and then a big sugar tortilla at the green one.
At the next house, a white-haired viejita suddenly popped out and started drenching me with water, saying, “I hate ghosts, devils, and witches visiting my house! A bucket of holy water should take care of you!”
I ran to the sidewalk where Mama was waiting for me. Something flew over my head. I looked down and found a card with an image of the Guardian Angel attached to an old black boot. Mama picked up the boot, slipped the card off, and dropped it into my bag. She left the crazy viejita’s boot by her door.
After that it was more cucumbers, carrots, sugar tortillas, pennies, peanuts, popcorn balls, and even a brown egg from a woman with her very own chicken coop, which Mama volunteered to carry. There were flowers, too—fresh, paper, and plastic. One woman asked if I wanted a bean taco.
I did get a couple of lollipops, even one with a tequila worm inside, as well as a few pieces of hard candy, but my Halloween bag was only getting heavier and heavier with vegetables. And I hated vegetables—all of them, but especially cucumbers.
I stopped. “Mama, I want to go home. Now.”
“Why? Why do you look so sad?”
I hesitated. “Well . . . I was hoping to get chocolate bars and quarters. Last year Berta got chocolate candy bars and quarters on the other side of town.”
The next thing I knew I was in the car. When we crossed the railroad tracks and came to a stop sign, I looked out and saw princesses, pirates, and penguins in the most amazing store-bought costumes. They were carrying big orange plastic pumpkins for their treats.
And when I came to the first house, a white brick mansion, I pushed a lit-up button and heard bells. The enormous door with the gold handle swung open, and a woman in pointy high heels came out carrying a huge bowl full of Hershey bars and silver-wrapped chocolate Kisses. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I felt the incredible warmth of the big fireplace inside.
I stood staring, forgetting to say “Trick or treat.” The woman smiled and dropped a chocolate bar into my paper bag, then a quarter, and then a whole handful of Kisses.
And it was the same at the other five mansions we visited.
When we got home, I put my treats from the other side of town into a second bag, leaving the sugar tortillas and carrots and cucumbers in the first one. And when Lucy asked for some candy, I showed her the first bag.
The next day, Mama told me to come with her to Doña Virginia’s. I saw that her house was the same one that had given me the sugar skull with my name on it. We went inside and found Don Chuy, her husband, who took us to a tiny back room. There we found Doña Virginia under a pyramid of covers, her eyes closed, and hardly breathing.
Mama opened her purse and took out her plastic bottle of holy water. She poured some holy water on her fingers and then made the sign of the cross on Doña Virginia’s pale forehead.
Don Chuy quietly asked us to come to the kitchen for tea, which he made by boiling leaves from his orange tree. He brought a plate of white skulls to the table.
“These are Virginia’s sugar skulls,” he said sadly. “She got up really early yesterday morning to make a big batch of them. She wanted to make sure she had enough for all the barrio kids.
“I insisted she go back to bed, that she was too sick. I said I’d go to the store and buy a bag of candy, of chocolate, even. But no, she wanted to give the kids something connected to the Day of the Dead.
“October thirty-first is so hard for both of us . . . her, especially. Our son Luis would’ve been Sofia’s age by now.
“Sofia, do you know that the souls of children get divine permission to come visit their families on October thirtyfirst? The adults come on November first. And then they all depart again on November second for another year.”
I shook my head.
Don Chuy touched my head and told us how Doña Virginia had dragged herself around the kitchen, making pan de polvo and hot Mexican chocolate for Luis and a pot of pozole for her parents. Don Chuy took us to their tiny living room and showed us a makeshift altar in the corner, with two flickering votive candles, orange marigolds in a dime-store vase, and small statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe and other saints.
Don Chuy pointed to some black-and-white photos. “This is my son Luis. Those are Virginia’s parents.” He lifted the lid off a ceramic bowl. I smelled the chilies and pork in the pozole Doña Virginia had cooked for her parents. There was a cup of hot chocolate and a plate full of sparkling pan de polvo cookies for Luis. His favorite treat.
I also noticed a red wooden top, a small stuffed bear, a bottle of tequila, and a cigar, as well as a glass of water, a cross made from lime peel, and a salt shaker on the altar.
Walking home, I asked Mama about the altar and the things I had seen there. She said that Doña Virginia’s son Luis and her parents were coming to visit for just one day. The lime cross was to direct them home, the salt to purify them, and the water for them to drink along their way. And once they got home, they would feast on their favorite foods and drinks.
When we got home, I found Papa at the kitchen table reading Don Quixote. Lucy was fast asleep.
“Ah, mi’ja, show me your Halloween candy,” he said, smiling. I went and got the bags from under my bed.
“Why do you have two bags?”
“One has the stuff I got around here; the other has the candy bars and quarters from the other side of town.”
The next thing I knew I was back in the car, but this time with Papa. “I’m taking you to the cemetery to show you something magical about this side.”
The cemetery was strangely aglow with lit candles and sprinkled with orange marigolds. I felt fear, not magic.
“Papa, I don’t want to get out of the car.”
“Look,” he said.
In the cemetery, people were talking, dancing, and playing guitars and singing to the tombs and eating from plates piled high with tamales and other foods. Had some of these people come out of their graves? Maybe Doña Virginia’s son Luis and her parents were now over at her house visiting. I thought about the sugar skull she’d made for me—the one with my name on it.
Papa smiled at me and started the car.
“I wish we lived on the other side of town,” I said, looking out the window at the darkness.
“Why, mi’ja?”
“Because they live in nice houses, and they’re warm.”
“Ah, but there’s warmth on this side too.”
“But . . . it’s really cold at home, and most of the houses around us are falling apart.”
“Yes, but we have our music, our foods, our traditions. And the warm hearts of our families. Remember how the comadres all got together and found a way to cure Lucy, and with just an old broom? And it was something those rich doctors couldn’t do.”
Sometimes I thought Papa was from another world, especially when he talked like this.
“Don’t worry, mi’ja,” he said as he stopped the car in front of the house. “You’ll see what I’m talking about as you get older.”
I walked into our cold house, nodding and shivering.
TaCO HeaD
Mama used to pack two bean tacos for my school lunch each day. Every morning she’d get up at five to make a fresh batch of flour masa. She’d roll out and cook one tortilla at a ti
me until she had a big stack of them, nice and hot, and then she’d fill each with beans that she’d fried in bacon grease and flavored with chopped onion in her huge cast-iron skillet.
And each morning I would sit at the kitchen table and say, “Mama, can I please have some lunch money too, or a sandwich instead?” But the reply was always the same: “Why, mi’ja? You already have these delicious bean tacos to eat.”
It wasn’t that the tacos weren’t good; it was that some kids called all Mexican Americans beaners, so the last thing I needed was to stand out like a big stupid sign. All the other kids either bought their lunch at the cafeteria or took nice white sandwiches.
I started going to the very end of the cafeteria, to turn my back and gobble up my tacos.
Then I started eating each taco by first putting it in a bag.
It would take me all of five minutes to eat, and then I’d go outside to the playground. I was always the first one there, often the only one for quite a while. But I didn’t mind, except on really cold days, when I wished I were still inside.
On one cold day, I so dreaded going outside that I started eating my second taco rather slowly. “Hey, you!” someone shouted. I turned and found a big girl standing right smack in front of me, her arms crossed over her chest like bullet belts.
“What’s in that paper bag?” She glared and poked at the bag with her fat finger.
I was stunned stupid. She grabbed the bag.
“Taco head! Taco head!” She yelled. In seconds I was surrounded by kids chanting “Taco head! Taco head!”
I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Not only was I found out, but the girl had caused my taco to fly open and splatter all over my white sweater.
This nightmare went on forever, until Coach Clarke, the girls’ PE teacher, blew her whistle and ordered everyone back to their seats.
“Sofia,” she said, “don’t pay attention to them. They’re just being mean and silly.” She took me to the teachers’ lounge and helped me clean up.
For two days after that, I went directly to the playground and didn’t eat my lunch until I got home after school. And then for two days after that, I ate inside a stall in the girls’ restroom.
The next Monday, Coach Clarke stopped me in the hall. “Sofia, how about we eat lunch together in the cafeteria?”
When the lunch bell rang, I found Coach Clarke sitting in the middle of the cafeteria, with students standing all around her. She looked up and waved me over.
“Here, Sofia,” she said as she pulled out the chair beside her. “Everyone else was begging to sit with me, but I said no, that I was saving this chair for you.”
I sat down, feeling sick, nervous.
“How about we trade?” Coach said. She opened her lunch bag and pulled out a half-sandwich wrapped in plastic. “I’ll trade this for one of your tacos.”
All the kids were staring at us.
“Oh, please, I really want to trade.”
I hesitated and pulled out my lunch. I unwrapped the foil.
“Those look good,” Coach said, reaching for a taco. “Better than any stupid sandwich I’ve ever had. See for yourself. Take a bite.”
I carefully unwrapped the half-sandwich and took a little bite. It was awful, something between sardines and bologna.
“Ha! Told you!” Coach Clarke said, laughing. “Here,” she said, taking the rest of the sandwich, “you don’t have to eat it. Have your taco instead.”
As I ate one and Coach Clarke ate the other, she kept making all these loud mmmmm sounds. I knew everyone in the cafeteria could hear.
And the next day we ate lunch together in the middle of the cafeteria. We traded. Again, her half-sandwich was truly awful. Do all sandwiches taste like something between sardines and bologna? I wondered.
But this time, as she ate one taco and I the other, she told me stories about herself: about how she became a coach because she’d fallen in love with sports at school; how she loved playing soccer most but had also been good at playing field hockey and softball. We laughed when she described the funny skirt she had worn playing field hockey.
I told her I liked to play soccer too, with my father and cousins in the street. Then I remembered Clara and her stories, so I told Coach Clarke about Clara and how she told me that I had inherited my great-greatgrandmother’s gift for kicking like a mule. I hesitated, then said, “I wish I’d kicked the girl who made fun of me.”
“Sofia, learn to kick with your head instead.”
“Like in soccer?”
“No, like with your brain. And you know how you can really kick that girl, and really hard?”
“How?”
“By kicking her butt at school, by beating her in English, math, everything—even sports.”
Coach Clarke and I had lunch together the rest of that week. She asked me for the recipe for the tacos. I had to ask both Papa and Mama for this, since Papa cleaned and cooked the beans before Mama fried them.
After that, I wanted to “kick that girl” so bad that I asked Coach Clarke if I could go to the library to study after lunch instead of wasting time on the playground. She arranged it for me. She also told me, “Part of ‘kicking that girl’ is to eat your tacos proudly, and right in the middle of the cafeteria.”
That year I kicked that girl in all classes and sports, especially soccer.
It wasn’t long after my lunches with Coach Clarke that some of the other Mexican American kids started eating their foods out in the open too. And sometimes when I pulled out my lunch, I got offers to trade for sandwiches. But I always ate both my tacos before heading off to the library.
The FanCY SChOOL
MRS. West was reading to my ninth-grade English class when a boy from the office walked in and handed her a note. She glanced at it and then looked straight at me. As she started toward me, I froze.
Mrs. West handed me the note. “Go see Mr. Thomas.” Mr. Thomas was the school counselor. “Take your books. You might be gone for a while.”
What did I do wrong?
As I headed down the hall, I started panicking. Someone died! No, no. I prayed now that I had somehow gotten into big trouble.
“Good morning, Sofia,” said Mr. Thomas, waving me to the chair in front of his desk. “I have some exciting news. A doctor is funding scholarships to send four Mexican American students from the Lower Rio Grande Valley to Saint Luke’s Episcopal School in Austin. His own kids are there. It’s a terrific school.
“Since you’re at the top of your class, I want to recommend you. You’ll still have to go through tests and interviews. But I think you have a great chance. And going to such a good school will open many doors for you.”
He handed me a brochure.
On the front was a picture of a beautiful white stone chapel on top of a hill. It was all aglow. The photo must’ve been taken around Christmas, for the chapel was surrounded by hundreds of lighted luminarios, and another photo showed the inside, decorated with red poinsettias and tiny twinkling lights. What did it mean to go to an Episcopal school? Were the chapel services anything like Catholic Mass?
Inside the brochure, I saw that the school buildings were made from the same white stone and that they surrounded the chapel in the shape of a rectangle, like a fortress. The playing fields were beautiful and green. Thoughts of running down those fields, kicking a soccer ball, filled my head. No more street soccer. And there was a girls’ soccer team too, with crimson uniforms. Wow!
The images of the school seemed like a dream. They made me think of the mansions on the other side of town, where the lawyers and doctors lived. When I read that all the students there graduated and went on to college, I thought of Coach Clarke and learning to kick with my head.
“So what do you think?” said Mr. Thomas, breaking my trance.
“Eh . . . how far is Austin from here?”
“Oh, about three hundred and fifty miles.”
“Oh.” So far away!
“But it’s a boarding s
chool, so if you get in, you’ll be living in a dorm with the other students.”
Silence.
“But you’ll be able to come home for the holidays, and for summer.”
I wanted to play soccer on those beautiful playing fields. I wanted to get better at kicking with my head so I could go to college. I could get a good job and make enough money to buy a nice house for my parents and Lucy.
But to go and live at a school? Without my family?
“Sofia, do you think that’s too far away?”
“Well . . . my parents . . . you know . . . ,” I said.
“Yes, of course. It can be especially hard for the parents, having their child go away to school. But it’s a terrific school, and you have already gotten to the very top of what we can offer here. It would be a great opportunity to challenge yourself.”
Silence.
“So let me suggest this: go talk this over with your family, show them the brochure, and then come see me again next Wednesday at ten. Okay?”
I talked to Berta first, on the porch.
“Sofia, you’re crazy! You’re the best at everything here. Why not stay, graduate as the McAllen valedictorian, and get a full scholarship to college? Just look at these pictures,” Berta said, punching the brochure with her finger. “These are rich kids. Snooty. With parents who went to college and all. You might even flunk out!”
“I know, but . . .”
“But what? We’re fourteen. We should be planning our quinceañeras. And here you are planning . . . your, what, your escape!”
“I’m not trying to escape.”
“Austin is nine hundred miles away!”
“It’s only three hundred and fifty.”
“That’s far, Sofia, really far! It’s not like you can still live at home and board a bus every morning. . . .”
“I know, Berta.”
Silence.
“And what about your papa, mama, and Lucy . . . and me ?”
The Tequila Worm Page 3