Houston, We Have a Problema

by Gwendolyn Zepeda

  After lunch, they all drove to the house and stood in the yard to watch David unload the lawn mower from his SUV.

  “Surprise!” Sabrina sang out.

  A polite smile was frozen to Papi’s face. “Wow. That’s real nice. I bet that cost a lot of money, huh?”

  “Now you don’t have to use that old push mower anymore, Papi,” Sabrina explained. “Now you can mow the lawn with this new one, every weekend.”

  “Thank you, baby.” Papi said somewhat mechanically. He gave her a kiss on the cheek, then turned to Jessica with a gleam of anticipation in his eye. “What about you, Jessi? What’d you get me?”

  “Uh . . . the lawn mower is from all of us, Papi.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you, girls. It’s very nice.”

  He reached over and hugged them both at once and then shook David’s hand, too. It was obvious, to Jessica, at least, that he was hiding his disappointment. He was trying, finally, to behave appropriately, and for some reason, that broke her heart. Despite her annoyance with her father for ruining their lunch, Jessica wished that she’d woken up early and bought him something good after all.

  After Sabrina and David left, Jessica went inside to help her mother get ready for the barbecue. Papi sat on the couch the whole time, criticizing the people on TV.

  “Viejo, why don’t you go outside and try your new lawn mower?” Mami called to him as she peeled potatoes.

  “Because this is supposed to be my day to celebrate, not to do extra work,” he called back.

  Mami rolled her eyes and muttered, “What do you think I’m doing?”

  Jessica looked down at the pickles she was chopping. The last thing she needed was Mami and Papi starting more drama. Her head was pounding, and she wished like crazy that she’d made some excuse to miss the barbecue.

  “You call that Miss America? Girl, you better get in the kitchen and eat something!” her father exclaimed. Mami chopped a potato in half with a loud thwack.

  “Papi, why don’t you go tune your guitar so you can play it tonight?” Jessica called to him. “I haven’t heard you play in a long time.”

  Long ago, before Jessica was born, her father had played in a mariachi band. That was how he and Mami had met, in fact. Back then, their names had been Alejandro and Maria. He’d first seen her when he and his group had played at her cousin’s wedding one Saturday night. Afterward, Alejandro had followed Maria home and serenaded her under her bedroom window. Although it sounded a little like stalking now, Jessica knew that in the old days, that sort of thing was considered romantic. By the time her parents were married and Sabrina came along, Papi had given up his mariachi gigs and started working full-time at the bottling plant. And now, so many years later, he was a supervisor there. He still kept a guitar, but he played it only once in a while. That had always been Jessica’s favorite part of their family parties — when her father sang those old romantic songs, like someone out of a movie.

  “I’m not going to play tonight,” Papi called from the couch. “Your mother doesn’t like it. She says it’s embarrassing.”

  “It’s not your playing that embarrasses me,” Mami retorted. “It’s the way you’re always drunk when you do it.”

  “Fine . . .” Papi’s voice got louder. “Maybe I’ll sell my guitar, then, and use the money to buy something you’ll like. Like a new vacuum cleaner.”

  “Why not hire me a maid instead?” Mami called back just as loudly. “She can clean up all the mess you make.”

  Jessica pushed all the vegetables she’d chopped into a bowl, all the while wondering if she should get involved. Obviously, her attempts to distract them weren’t working.

  Her father had come into the doorway by then. “Maybe I will hire a maid,” he said to Mami. “Maybe she’d appreciate me more than you.”

  Jessica was frightened of the look in his eyes. It was as if he were goading Mami, daring her to argue back.

  She did more than just that. She slammed the potato and knife she’d been holding into the sink, causing potato skins to fly into the air. She turned to face Papi full on and practically yelled in his face:

  “What is there to appreciate? All you do is sit on your ass, watching TV and drinking beer. You don’t appreciate me. I work all day, then come home and clean up after you. Cook your dinner! Do your laundry! And you know what?”

  She took a kitchen towel from the counter, wiped her hands with it, and threw it on the floor. “I’m sick of it.” Then she untied the apron she was wearing and threw it to the floor, too.

  “Mami,” said Jessica. But her mother ignored her. She pushed past Papi, who had been standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. Jessica followed her into the living room in time to see her disappear through the bedroom door. Jessica turned to her father, but he also ignored her and watched the bedroom door instead.

  Mami came out with her purse and her keys.

  “There you go,” Papi called in a mocking voice. “Go ahead. Throw your little tantrum! Why don’t you go to the mall and spend all the rest of my money? That always makes you feel better.”

  Mami fixed him with an icy glare. “Why don’t you go to hell? I’m not going to the mall. And I’m not coming back, either, so you’re going to have to cook your own damn dinner.”

  And with that she went out the front door, slamming it hard behind her.

  Jessica stood absolutely still. Her mouth hung open in complete shock.

  Her father ran to the door and opened it. Already, Mami was in her car, starting the engine. “Again!” he yelled. “You mean, cook my own dinner again!”

  Mami’s car made a loud noise as it peeled out onto the road. Papi stood and watched it disappear.

  “Papi,” said Jessica. She didn’t know what she was going to say, but she had to say something.

  He turned to her and spoke before she could. “Here comes your mother’s family, m’ija. Tell them we’re not having the party anymore. I’ll be in the garage.”

  He went out the door, opening it wide enough for Jessica to see a car full of relatives pull up.

  After she’d sent everyone home with excuses and foil-wrapped plates of brisket, Jessica had cleaned up her mother’s kitchen and then gone home without another word to her father. She was angry with him for the first time in a very long while. She couldn’t believe the inconsiderate things he’d said to her mother. She couldn’t believe he’d left her to deal with the barbecue guests like that.

  Then again, she thought as she drove home, she couldn’t believe her mother’s behavior, either. Papi had been the same way throughout their marriage. Why did it suddenly bother her now?

  Sabrina, Jessica thought. It was Sabrina. Ever since she’d married David and moved out to that big house in Sugarland, their mother had slowly become more and more dissatisfied with Papi and his ways.

  The minute she got back to her apartment, Jessica called her sister.

  “Hello?”

  “Sabrina. Is Mami there with you?” Jessica’s voice came out accusing, but she didn’t care.

  “No. Why?”

  “Because she got mad at Papi and left before the barbecue. She said she wasn’t coming back.”

  “Oh, God,” her sister said. “Did she say she was coming over here?”

  “No. But she must be. That’s where she went last time, to your house.”

  “Well, she’s not here. But David’s parents will be here any minute now. Dang it. Why won’t Mami get a cell phone?”

  For some reason, hearing the alarm in Sabrina’s voice made Jessica feel better — maybe because now she wasn’t alone in her concern. “Well, where else would she have gone? Papi said something about the mall.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. With Mami, who knows? Where does she ever go besides work and the grocery store? And my house?”

  The two sisters sat in silent worry, connected by blood and a telephone signal.

  “I didn’t realize it’d gotten so bad between them,” Jessica said then. />
  Sabrina sighed. “Mami didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Oh, but it’s okay for you to worry? What’s up with that?”

  Sabrina sighed again. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her. Listen, I’ll call you if I hear anything, and you do the same, okay? In the meantime, why don’t you try to talk to Papi? Make him apologize so they can get over this.”

  Jessica’s thumbnail had gone to her mouth, and she chewed it very lightly, not wanting to give in to her worries. “Do you think that’ll help? I mean, it kind of seems like they’re past that point, doesn’t it? The way they were yelling at each other today . . . Sabrina, it sounds pretty bad.” Even though she resented her older sister knowing more about the situation than she did, Jessica found that she wanted Sabrina to reassure her.

  “I don’t know, Jessi. We’ll just have to see, I guess.”

  After renewed promises to call each other if they heard anything, the sisters hung up.

  Jessica spent the rest of the evening lying on her couch, watching a bunch of teenage dramas on TV. She called her father more than once, but he didn’t answer. Guillermo called and hung up on her voice mail twice.

  The third time, he didn’t hang up. But it wasn’t Guillermo, either. It was Jonathan. By the time Jessica realized this, the call had already rolled to voice mail. She waited for him to finish, then played back his message. He said he’d had a good time Friday night, and he wanted to know if she was free the following weekend, because he had a little surprise.

  Jessica decided to call him back tomorrow. Right now, she wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. Her parents’ fight had really brought her down. It was coloring the way she felt about everything.

  More than ever she felt that the path of her life was already laid out for her but clouded over so she couldn’t see where it went. If she’d been a character in a movie, or in one of the novels on her bookshelf, Jessica would start out as an assistant, sure, but then something magical would happen. She’d get discovered at a club and become one of Amber Chavez’s backup dancers. Or else she’d find out she was a long-lost princess of an island no one had ever heard of before.

  But that wasn’t the way real life worked. Her choice of plotlines was pretty limited. She could work at McCormick for the rest of her life, like her mother at Hawthorne Elementary, or she could marry someone with money and quit her job, like Sabrina. Or she could marry someone like Guillermo and struggle along, hoping her kids would do better in life than she had. Like her mother? she wondered suddenly. Maybe her mother felt that way about her marriage to Papi.

  She stopped herself there. She didn’t want to think about her parents in that way.

  The truth was, Jessica knew, that she didn’t have to do any of those things. She could always strike out on her own and try to get her web design business going full-time. She might meet someone completely new, sometime in the future, who ended up being perfect for her in every way.

  But those ideas scared her. She had to admit to herself that she was afraid to try something new.

  All the fortune-telling and magic soap she bought wouldn’t change that. But she wished, at least, that it could tell her which choices would be the right ones — the ones that would make her happy.

  She didn’t want to end up like Sabrina, spending her days decorating and selling kitchenware to her friends. And she didn’t want to end up like Mami, screaming at her husband and then running away from home and making her daughters sick with worry. Maybe that was part of why it bothered her so much when they tried to tell her what to do. It wasn’t only that their “advice” made her feel childish; maybe it was also that if Jessica was completely honest, she didn’t respect the choices they’d made in their own lives.

  After Jessica had watched Manhattan High and Love Search: San Antonio, Guillermo called again. This time, he left a voice mail. “Chiquitita. Come on. Call me back, corazón.”

  Right as she was carrying Ricky to the bedroom, the phone rang again. It was Sabrina, finally.

  “Sabrina, what happened?” she said into the phone a little breathlessly.

  But it wasn’t her sister. It was Mami, calling from Sabrina’s house. “M’ija, it’s me. I’m just calling to let you know I’m okay.”

  “Mami. What happened? Where did you go?”

  “Nowhere. I’m spending the night at Sabrina’s tonight. If you talk to your father, please let him know. Also, I’m sorry I left you there to do the barbecue by yourself.”

  Her mother’s calm tone was completely exasperating. Jessica tried to keep her voice patient. “It was fine. I told everybody you got sick and went to take a nap. But, Mami, why did you leave like that? When are you going back home? You and Papi can’t keep fighting like this. You have to go home and work this out.”

  Her mother was silent for a long time. Every second of her silence gave Jessica more and more reason to be afraid. Then, finally, Mami said, “I don’t know yet, m’ija. I have to think things over.”

  Before Jessica could say anything else, her mother said, “Listen, I have to go now. But I’ll call you back tomorrow, okay? If you talk to your father, tell him I’m okay, but don’t tell him anything else.”

  Jessica agreed unhappily, and her mother hung up the phone.

  35

  Monday morning, Jessica sat at her desk typing up insurance certificates, trying her best to put her family’s troubles out of her mind. But they wouldn’t let her.

  First, Papi called. On her cell. Right as Ted was walking by. He raised an eyebrow at the ringing coming from her purse but didn’t say anything, luckily.

  “Hello?”

  “Jessi, I need you to call your mother and tell her you need her to come home. Did you know she never came home last night?” His voice rose to a bellow.

  “Shh . . . I know.” Jessica felt the need to quiet Papi down, as if her bosses might overhear him. “Why don’t you just call her yourself? You know she’s at Sabrina’s house.”

  “Because I don’t want to bring Sabrina and David into it. This is between your mother and me.”

  Why, then, Jessica wondered, was Papi bringing her into it? “Papi, you really need to call Mami yourself. You need to apologize.”

  “For what?” Her father’s voice became loud again. “For not jumping up and mowing the lawn every time she tells me, like I’m her slave? She needs to apologize to me.”

  “Papi . . .” Jessica tried to think of something soothing to say, then realized that soothing her father’s ego wasn’t going to get him to do what needed to be done. “I know you hate mowing the lawn, but did you ever think that maybe Mami feels like a slave when she has to cook dinner for you guys every night? When’s the last time you cooked?” Her father snorted derisively, so Jessica amended her question. “When’s the last time you took her out to eat, then?”

  “She never wants to go!” he said. “I’ve asked her a hundred times to go to Rudy’s with me on catfish night, and she always says she has to clean the house instead!”

  Jessica was about to suggest that maybe her mother would like something a little nicer than Rudy’s fried catfish, but just then Ted came by for the second time with a file in his hand. He stopped near Jessica’s desk and cleared his throat.

  “Look, Papi, I have to go now. I’ll call you later, okay? But please think about what I said.” In a whisper, Jessica added, “And call Mami!” Then she hung up and gave Ted her full attention while he gave her instructions on the file.

  The moment he stepped away, her cell rang again. This time it was her mother. Jessica sighed in quiet exasperation. She saw Rochelle and Olga giving her curious looks. She bent down toward her desk for relative privacy and answered the phone.

  “Mami. Did Papi call you?”

  “No. Why, did he say he would?”

  “Well, no, but —”

  “Jessica,” her mother interrupted, “you and I need to talk. Can we have lunch tomorrow?”

  “Uh . . .
yeah, sure.” Jessica really was afraid now. Why was her mother asking to have lunch with her, as if she were planning a business meeting? She almost didn’t want to find out. She almost told her mother no.

  But instead they made plans to meet at Joe’s Mexican Restaurant the next day at noon.

  “I know you’re at work, so I won’t keep you,” her mother said in the same emotionless voice she’d been using since the night before.

  Jessica hung up with her and went back to work unhappily, trying her hardest not to worry about what her mother might say the next day.

  Instead she worried about her promotion all morning long. By the time she came back to the office from lunch at Shoe Warehouse, Jessica was ready to march into Mr. Cochran’s office and demand her promotion right then and there. Or at least she was ready to demand it if he ever showed up. Olga was away from her desk, and Rochelle ran off to the ladies’ room the moment Jessica sat down. To distract herself, she worked like a maniac on her files. As the afternoon went on, she felt the anxiety creeping back.

  What if she asked Mr. Cochran for a promotion and he said no?

  What if her father never called her mother to apologize?

  What if her mother wanted a divorce?

  Fred rushed into the office at two, hysterical over a renewal he’d let slip. Jessica calmed him down and immediately set to work, scanning and e-mailing applications to the underwriters she knew would give good last minute quotes. She was right in the middle of all that when Mr. Cochran strolled in, at three, and shut himself up in his office. He still hadn’t opened his door when it was time to go home.

  Jessica turned off her computer and picked up her stuff to leave. At least she’d saved Fred’s account. It was a good opportunity to remind them of how valuable she was around here.

  As she left work, a light summer thunderstorm started, echoing her mood. She turned on her windshield wipers and drove straight to Madame Hortensia’s.