by Lindsey Lane
“Chicle. Chicle.” Juany’s boy is whining for gum. As usual, Juany is ignoring him. Without looking, Maricela knows that Juany is fixed on Alfredo, while her little boy is searching her pockets for something to eat. Niño. That’s all Juany’s ever called him. She still hasn’t given him a name. At least not one that Maricela has ever heard. Always, Juany is looking at Alfredo. Especially after he has been drinking all night. Always, she wants to make sure Alfredo’s eyes are on her.
Maricela glances at Alfredo, standing in the middle of the pull-out. In the dim light, Maricela can see Alfredo is not looking at Juany. Or their boy. He is staring directly at her.
Maricela sucks her breath in and bends over the comic book. If Juany sees her looking back at Alfredo, she’ll come over and slap her. Not Alfredo. The look would be Maricela’s fault. Maricela would be the whore, la puta.
That’s how it is with Juany. Alfredo is her man ever since she went with him. No one else can have him and if anyone looks at him, Juany calls her every kind of whore. So the girls ignore Alfredo. At least when Juany is looking. When she isn’t, all the girls sneak looks at him. As soon as they do, Alfredo catches their eyes with his and lingers on them. It doesn’t matter if he is hunched over a plate of food or talking with the other men in the fields. Alfredo’s deep brown eyes drift to the girl watching him and take in every inch of her. Without moving, Alfredo’s eyes prowl after the girl. If she finishes picking one row of beans and turns to start the next row, Alfredo glances over at her no matter how far away he is and holds her in his gaze for a minute. Then he looks away. Only she still feels his eyes on her. The way a lizard might feel the paw print of the cat that pounces but lets him go.
Maricela has watched Alfredo do it dozens of times. Ever since he showed up in this area of Texas. Was it her first year, when she was eleven? Maricela scanned the calendar of seasons in her mind. Her parents got sent back last spring when she was fourteen. Juany had Alfredo’s boy the spring before that. Juany went out with Alfredo three years ago but he came the spring before because she remembers Juany talking and talking about him.
Four years, she’s been listening to the girls whisper about how he is muy sexy, how he looks older than their brothers but younger than their fathers. They sigh about him. Even the older women gossip about Alfredo. They talk about how his eyes creep down their skin like fingers. How could eyes be like fingers? Maricela didn’t understand it. Now Alfredo’s eyes are on her and she can feel them pulling her hair away from her neck, looking for any bit of skin.
Maricela doesn’t look up. She can’t. Not only because of Juany’s temper. Juany’s like a big sister to Maricela. Her parents told Maricela to stay in America where her birth certificate says she belongs. They asked Juany, three years older than Maricela, to watch out for her. Juany’s helped her a lot, telling when and where to show up for work, making sure Maricela has a place to sleep and showing her how to send money to her family. This past Saturday, she helped Maricela send money for Mother’s Day. Juany doesn’t ask for anything in return. Except she tells Maricela not to go with the boys too early. Especially not Alfredo. Especially after Juany got pregnant by him.
Juany went with Alfredo when she was almost sixteen. She told all the girls it would be different with her. He was her prize. She’d make him stay with her. She did, too. Not because he wanted to. She scared all the other girls away, calling them whores. Everyone knows that Juany is trying to hold on to Alfredo. No one would believe her if she called Maricela a whore. But they wouldn’t cross her either. Not Juany. She isn’t afraid to pick a fight and make life harder for girls she doesn’t like in the fields.
Maricela looks across the dirt expanse toward the highway. She wishes she heard the truck coming but all she can hear is Niño whining and coughing. He was up a lot last night, coughing and crying. It sounds like he is sick.
Bending forward so her hair curtains her face, Maricela peeks through the strands at Alfredo. She can’t see his eyes but she knows they are looking for an opening, following her strands of hair past her neck, inside her blouse. Don’t look. Don’t look.
But she wants to look. She wants to know what eyes creeping across her skin feels like. She wants to hear his fingers tickle the screen of a trailer door and his voice whisper soft and coaxing, like his eyes, “Maricelita, ven aquí.”
Maricela had seen lots of girls tiptoe out the door to be with him. When Juany went out to him three years ago, Maricela found a sheet under the bushes in the morning. No one was on it. Only some reddish brown spots. It embarrassed Maricela. It was like they had left dirty underwear for everyone to see.
She stares at the comic book. The horizon has turned custard yellow and she can almost see the pictures. She pulls back the curtain of her hair and tucks it behind her ear. She doesn’t look at Alfredo. But she knows his eyes are staring at her cheek, at the profile of her lips. She doesn’t want it to excite her but—
Slap.
It sounds so loud in the early morning that, for a moment, Maricela thinks she’s been slapped. When she looks, she sees Juany slapping Niño’s arm. He is pulling up her shirt, trying to get at her breasts. Niño is screaming. Juany picks him up and walks over to Alfredo. She swears at him and hands Niño to him. She tells him to take care of his son and stop looking at Maricela. Maricela looks down. No one moves. Niño has stopped crying for the moment he was in Juany’s arms, but as soon as she turns her back he starts screaming again. Snot and tears are all over his face.
Maricela’s eyes burn. She can see the white-faced figures in the comic now. One of them is wearing a mask and a cape. He is fighting a half-lizard, half-human creature. She can’t read the words but Maricela knows that the half-human creature is evil because of the meanness twisted into the face of the drawing. It looks like Juany’s face when Niño is trying to nurse and Alfredo turns away from her. It looks like the meanness of her wanting Alfredo to stay and hating how her boy hangs on her.
Maricela wishes she could fall into the squares on the page. Anywhere but here. She turns her head a little. Alfredo is still holding Niño like he is a sack of garbage that smells bad. Plus, Alfredo can hardly stand up straight, so he sits Alfredo on the ground next to him. Immediately, Niño pulls himself up on Alfredo’s leg. He is still crying and coughing. Snot pools under his nose. His mouth is edged in dirt. His feet and legs are chalky with dust. Maricela wishes she had a cape and a mask. She wants to go over and take the boy away from Juany and Alfredo. She wants to stab Alfredo and take away the soft brown eyes that make all the girls want him. She wants to hit Juany. So hard she cries like her boy.
Maricela blinks. The page in front of her is blurry. One of the squares is bubbled and wet from her tears. Everyone in the pull-out has turned to stone waiting for the moment to pass. No one looks at the boy or Alfredo or Juany. Seconds slip by. The rumbling sound of a vehicle approaches. The girls on either side of Maricela stand.
Maricela wants to get up but she doesn’t move. She wants to pick up the boy and walk out into the field beyond this stupid waiting place. She wants to show him the yellow flowers on the prickly pear cactus. They could pick one and blow the petals so they float in the air like butterfly wings. She thinks she remembers standing in a field with her father with butterflies all around them. Was it here or in Mexico?
A beat-up white van pulls to a stop at the edge of the pull-out. Maricela keeps her head down and doesn’t move. Everyone else walks toward the vehicle. Alfredo picks up Niño and hands him to Juany. Immediately Niño stops crying. Alfredo weaves by Maricela, close enough so she can smell the sour odor of alcohol mixed with his cologne. Juany is right behind him. Maricela knows her feet. She’s watched Juany paint her toenails and tell her how Alfredo kisses her feet and twirls his tongue around her ankle up to the inside of her thigh. She’s made Alfredo’s love sound so glorious. Like the kisses Maricela’s seen at the end of the romantic comic books.
Maricela glances over at the van. Most everyone is on. Juany is about to
step on when Niño starts coughing. He rubs his eyes and starts crying inconsolably. Maricela can hear the bus driver telling Juany she can’t get on with a sick baby. Juany says he doesn’t have a fever, only a little cough. The bus driver won’t let her on. Alfredo is nowhere in sight. He is probably in the back of the van, passed out already.
The sound of Niño’s crying gets louder. Maricela looks up and sees Juany standing in front of her with Niño on her hip, miserable. Juany looks at Maricela and she knows exactly what Juany is going to say. Juany has watched out for Maricela a whole year. She’s not asked for any money from Maricela. What she wants is to be with Alfredo. She loves him. It may be wrong or stupid but she wants to be with him just like the girls in the romantic comic books want to be with their boyfriends.
Juany says all that with her eyes. Then she says, “Me debes,” and hands Niño to Maricela.
Maricela takes Niño. She may or may not owe Juany, but if Maricela gets on that bus right now, Alfredo will put her on a crash course with Juany and the ending of that story would be bad for everyone.
Juany turns and walks away. Just as she is about to get in the van, she turns and calls to Maricela and says, “Hasta pronto.” Then the van door slides closed behind her.
Maybe Juany is saying that so everyone will think she is coming back for Niño. Maybe she really means it. Maybe their paths will cross in some field, somewhere. Maybe next week. Or the week after. The trucks with workers go round and round through the fields and farms like the carousel Maricela saw in one of the towns where they stayed last year.
Niño wriggles off Maricela’s lap and holds on to her knee, looking after Juany but she has disappeared. The sunlight has cracked the edge of the horizon. As the light hits the bus, it blackens all the windows so Maricela and Niño can’t see inside.
“Tilla?” The boy turns to Maricela, begging for a tortilla.
Maricela stares at him. His wet eyelashes outline his dark, black eyes. He blinks at her as if he is trying to imitate Alfredo’s winks. He has sweet eyes. Like Alfredo’s. As soon as he could crawl, he begged tortillas from everyone in the camp with those eyes. The way Alfredo’s eyes beg besitos, little kisses, from every girl he passes in the field. His eyes say he would die without those kisses. Like the boy’s eyes say he will starve without those tortillas.
Maricela looks at the boy. His grubby hand is still on her knee, steadying his wobbly stand as they watch the van roll away. When they can’t see or hear it anymore, silence floods the pull-out. The boy wobbles and falls. His diapered bottom plops onto the caliche. He looks up at Maricela. His eyes blink wide. His lower lip trembles. His face starts to crumple. Maricela reaches for him. As she does, she notices a small ring of keys on the ground. At first she thinks one of the other workers dropped them. But she didn’t hear them fall and no one was standing in that exact spot. One of the keys has a black rubber top like a car key. Only it’s small. Maricela wonders how the owner of the keys got home. Or if their car is stuck someplace else. She picks up the ring and fingers the three keys. Car. Home. What would the third one be? Maybe the home has two doors.
The boy reaches out for the keys but Maricela closes her fist around them and slips them in her pocket. She knows these keys aren’t hers and the doors they open are invisible to her but Maricela wants them. She wants them in her pocket. She wants to pretend she is the owner of the keys.
The boy grunts, stretching toward Maricela to be picked up. She pulls him onto her lap, wipes his nose, and opens the comic book. Together, they look at the pictures. Maricela studies one panel. The twisted half-lizard creature is on his back. His mean face looks in pain. Blood is leaking out his mouth. In the next panel, the man with the cape is scrambling up the side of the building to a little girl sitting on a window ledge. Behind her, flames consume her bed. Maricela tries to read the words in the bubble above the caped man’s head. “Hold on. I am coming.”
Maricela isn’t sure what the words mean but it feels like a good thing might happen next.
MAY 14 . TEN DAYS MISSING
JAMES
The last time I saw Tommy? Ten days ago. Friday. Physics class. It was the end of the day. He was sitting next to me doing his pencil-tapping, leg-jerking thing. He always did it at the end of class, when McCloud was droning on about due dates and the final. Tommy thought he could make time speed up. Like the force of his energy jerking in space would compress the minutes or make McCloud speed up. Drove me nuts. I’d point at my watch and tap it at the same speed as seconds ticking, like I was counteracting his energy force. Drove him nuts.
No idea where he was going. Tommy didn’t do “see you later” or “I’m going to the Stillwell Ranch, wanna come?” He just went. The bell rang and he was gone.
Well, that’s where they found his bike, right? Wait. Are you suspicious of me because I told you what everyone already knows? Whoa. Back off, Officer Krupke. I mean, Sheriff Caldwell. Sorry, West Side Story. Musical theater reference. You probably wouldn’t get it.
Tommy and I did not hang out. Yeah, I’ve known him since elementary school but Tommy didn’t do hanging out. He was too intense. We’ve always been in the same science classes and he’s always been my lab partner. Always. He’s the only one who could keep up with me. Have you ever had a bad lab partner? They’re really good at saying, “Whoops, I forgot to keep the control clean.” Or “I didn’t chart the second step. Was I supposed to?” Bad lab partners are a pain. Tommy was meticulous. Obsessed. I loved that. But we weren’t friends.
He’s always been intense. Not in a sick way. Like he didn’t catch bugs, deprive them of water, and chart their demise. It was more like when he was interested in something, that was all he could think about. Seriously. Pokémon cards when he was six. Daggers when he was ten. Genetics when he was fourteen. Particle physics now. He couldn’t be normal about liking something. He had to collect every Pokémon card ever made. He had to draw every style of dagger since the beginning of time. He had to know every possibility of gene combination with recessive and dominant traits in order to figure out when blue eyes would show up in a predominantly brown-eyed family. Now he’s obsessed with quantum theory. McCloud went off on a tangent about particle physics and Tommy got all supernerd about the subatomic world and how the rules are completely different from the world we live in. It’s kinda cool. How all possibilities exist until one is observed. But Tommy went off the charts about it. It was all he could think about. But that’s how Tommy is. It’s like he goes into a different dimension when he’s interested in something.
Girls? No way. Not interested. Yeah, of course he knew Rachel and Izzy. They’re part of the famous nerd squad in our class. They’ve managed to keep up with Tommy and me in every AP science class. He might have even noticed they were girls. But as far as dating girls or being attracted to them or doing the whole mating ritual, no way. It’s way too social sciences for Tommy. Too nebulous. Too gooey.
Rachel sort of acted like a mother hen with Tommy. Or like Miss Manners. Whenever Tommy would bolt at the end of class, she’d stop him in the doorway and ask him if he was leaving and he’d look up, down, and around like he was noticing where he was and then look at her like, well, I seem to be in the doorway and class is over so I must be leaving. He wouldn’t say a thing. And she’d say, “Now is when you say goodbye, Tommy.” And he’d say, “Bye,” like he was parroting back some foreign language, and then he would disappear. Poof. Gone.
Personally, I think Rachel had a thing for Tommy. You know, a crush on him. She might have asked him to the prom. I think she wanted to. Or was going to. Before he disappeared. Me? No, I didn’t go to prom. Let’s just say the person I wanted to go with asked someone else.
No way. No one hated Tommy. I mean, he said inappropriate stuff, like one time this huge guy—his name is Robert—he wandered into our class by mistake and Tommy bumped into him or something. When he looked up at this huge guy, Tommy said, “You look like foreign matter.” Everyone laughed. Even the big guy.
That was Tommy. He said nerdy stuff like that. Nothing antagonistic.
Oh you heard about that? Yeah, I took some hits for that superior intelligence thing I wrote. I was calling it the way it already is. People don’t like to admit it but they seek their own level. Like water. We think we are more inclusive but we’re not. Cheerleaders are as narrow-minded as I am. I am just smart enough to admit it.
Tommy didn’t have a group. He was random. I mean, you could say he was a science geek but he didn’t really hang out in the lab or with any other geeks. He was in his own world.
Look, I’m smart but Tommy’s like expanded smart. His brain could wrap around all the possibilities. In all ten dimensions. He had the kind of brain that could handle simultaneous realities. Like most people have to prove that there is only one right answer or one right way to be. Not Tommy. That’s why quantum physics and the superposition theory switched him on. If all possibilities exist, how does one right answer help us understand the problem? Does the problem still exist when we find the answer?
Like if you were asking Tommy where he was, he’d tell you he was riding his motorbike and walking across the field by the pull-out and looking for his notebook and going through a fold between dimensions and whatever else might be a possible reality. If we find out where he is, all the possibilities collapse into one observable reality. In a way, answers to problems are way less interesting than the problem.
I’m not upset, because I think he’s out there. What? You think I’m not upset because I stashed him somewhere? What for? So he could give me the answers to the final? Yeah, right. I’ve known Tommy for a long time. He’s out there. He wanders. He forgets where he is like he forgets his notebook, which is like his blankie. Most of us know not to loan him stuff because he’ll get distracted and set it down and forget it. That’s how he is. Maybe somehow he lost himself and he’s landed where all our lost stuff is and he’ll come wandering back with my Rubik’s Cube from third grade and that set of superstrong magnifying lenses I had in sixth grade. Man, it was a pretty good thing he lost those. I was way too into making things spontaneously combust back then.