by Liz Miles
I swooned. I read the note over three times before I realized I was holding my breath. Mira Albany! My heart swooned. Mira Albany! I thought about calling her now, but she wouldn’t even be home, she’d still be in the car with her father. I rummaged in my bag for a pen, determined to write back to her immediately, fresh with the fever from her words. Looking up, though, I noticed that most of the families were gone. The few faces that remained were unfamiliar—graduate students and some wardens from other courses. The digital clock by the mascot said it was 11:30.
I tucked the letter into my journal, deciding I could write to Mira on the train.
• • •
It was frightening how much I thought of Mira with a giddy joy, and how that joy could so quickly be crushed by the thought of Tommy at home—stable, good Tommy. This weekend, we would probably go out to dinner. Either the diner by his work or the new burger place by the mall. Or maybe we would go to one of the fancier cafes in town. We would watch television. We would swim in the pool at his parents’ house. We would fool around in the middle of the day when no one was at his house, the same patterns of sucking dick and finger fucking that we had been doing for what suddenly seemed like a long and boring amount of time. I was trying to treasure the memory of Mira, to remember her hand and palm and mouth, without overplaying the kiss. Tommy paled in comparison to the deep thing that I felt when I recalled Mira.
In my journal, I drew a box of blueberries, the tiny fruits with their star tops tumbling over the sides. Then, in giant box letters, I penciled the words “Oh No Oh No Oh No” until there wasn’t any more room on the page.
Dirty Talk
BY GARY SOTO
BORED ALMOST TO the point of tears, Tiffany Tafolla sat on the living room couch with a pillow on her lap. She looked up at the mantel clock: 10:37. She sighed and gazed out the front window. She wished something would happen. A cold Saturday morning in January, the fog was as gray as cement. How did people drive through such a brew?
She recalled seeing an old science fiction movie with her Uncle Richard. It was about fog that killed people, and it was one of Uncle Richard’s favourites from the 1950s. As she finished her box of Milk Duds, she knew that the movie was no good, no matter how much Uncle called it a classic. At age nine, she swore none too quietly, “This movie is *@!*.” Her uncle, who had also been devouring Milk Duds in the dark, halted his pleasurable munching and glared down at his niece. He licked his lips, as if preparing to scold her for her language. But he only winced, shook his head at his niece, and wiped her mouth clean of chocolate.
That was five years ago. Now, on the couch, Tiffany uttered, “That girl looks like a duck. Her *#&@!* legs are too short!” She was watching a rerun of Dance Your Ass Off, and Tiffany thought nothing of her outburst. The girl she cussed at deserved it! She had no business on television, especially with such a great partner! The guy was hot!
“I’m bored,” Tiffany admitted after releasing a yawn that could have inflated a balloon. She tossed the pillow in her lap aside, spooking awake her cat Maxi, and got up from the couch. She reached for the remote control on the coffee table before pressing “off”—the girl with short legs disappeared.
She was four steps into the kitchen and ready to confront the breakfast dishes, her one chore for the day, when her cell phone rang.
“**&#,” Tiffany muttered. She pulled the cell phone from her pants pocket and checked the phone number: Beatrice Rodriguez, her best friend. She took the call. “Hey, girl, what the +!@!*. You were supposed to call at nine.” They had plans to go the mall and scour the stores for good-looking guys. It would be something fun to do on a winter day.
“You know what that &!@!*Manuel did?” Beatrice bawled. “He’s sharing that *!@!* photo he took of me eating a burrito. It’s on his Facebook page!”
“Shisty rat!” Tiffany slurred in anger, her face heating up beneath a layer of multicolored cosmetics. She scowled as she remembered the photo. Beatrice was struggling with a burrito—the cheese was clinging to her chin like dental floss—when Manuel, her goofy boyfriend, clicked the photo with his cell phone. And now he had posted it on his Facebook! *!@!*.
“I hate him!” Beatrice bellowed. “I’m never going to talk to him again. He’s a *!@*!”
“Yeah, he is,” Tiffany agreed as she looked down at Maxi purring at her ankles. She tickled the cat’s scruff with her toes. “I got to clean up the kitchen, but I’ll be over in an hour.” She snapped shut her phone in anger, uttered, “*$%@*!” and, rolling up the sleeves of her red hoodie, faced the dishes piled high as an Egyptian pyramid. She squirted blue detergent into a plastic tub and picked up a sponge—one side was spongy, the other side rough. Her make-up began to loosen from the steam of the hot water and her anger at Manuel for pulling such a trashy trick. How dare he put that image on Facebook! “That’s his girlfriend,” she roared to the black frying pan. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked the plates covered in hardened egg. “How could he do that!” she yelled at the spoons and forks. Her heart beat angrily as she pushed the frijoles down the garbage disposal. She ground them for a long minute.
Finished, Tiffany reapplied her make-up, sprayed her neck with perfume, and put on a long wool coat that reached below her knees. She pulled on a Raiders cap and black gloves, and made her exit.
“Man, it’s cold,” Tiffany complained with a shiver from the porch. Nevertheless, it was good to get out of the house and have a purpose greater than watching television. She would run over to Beatrice’s house and make her feel better. Tiffany clapped her two gloved hands together and sprinted off the porch, leaping with her arms out like wings. She felt happy doing this, the spring and leap off the porch. If only she could really fly!
“*!@!*,” she heard from the neighbor, Mr. Ramirez, a heavy-set man who could break a sweat just picking up a tool from the ground. He was in his driveway fooling with his pickup truck. In the bed of his truck sat Frisko, his pit bull rescued from the animal shelter. Frisko sported a pirate’s patch over his permanently injured eye and a collar studded with nails.
“Hey, Mr. Ramirez,” Tiffany greeted, her white breath unrolling like a cloud from her mouth. “It’s =*&! cold, huh?”
“You got that right,” he hollered from behind the small wooden fence that ran between the properties. He complained about the starter and, gazing into his tool box, muttered, “Where’s my socket wrench? *!@!*.”
“Do you think Frisko’s cold?” Tiffany asked. She felt sorry for the dog because, unlike Maxi, he had to sleep outside on an old army blanket.
Mr. Ramirez looked momentarily at the dog. “*!@!* no. The dude is built for cold.”
Tiffany walked across the frozen lawn, turned, and walked backwards a few steps, her house slowly disappearing in the fog. Down the street, she ran into Mrs. Clarke, her former babysitter, who had spent a few months in jail for passing bad checks. But that temporary lapse of good judgment didn’t color Tiffany’s opinion of Mrs. Clarke. No, everyone was doing bad—passing worthless checks, making late rent payments, and committing outright thievery. Only last week one of their neighbors caught a teenager breaking into his house. The multitasking teenager, reported the neighbor to the police, was on his cell phone talking to a friend while he was shimmying through the back bedroom window.
“A $&*!=* cold day, huh?” Mrs. Clarke offered up as conversation. Bundled in a couple of coats, she was raking leaves in her front yard. When she smiled, she revealed an empty space where a tooth should be lodged. Her ratty hair looked as if it had been pulled at by a blackbird.
“Yeah, it is,” Tiffany answered in return. “I can hardly see where I’m *!@*! walking.” She laughed and thought, I just cussed. She sprinted down the street, trying to build up heat beneath her coat. But she stopped when an elderly woman asked in Spanish if Tiffany could help her.
“Like what?” Tiffany asked roughly.
“El arbol de naranja,” she began to explain. She pointed to the tree at the side of her house. �
��Would you be a dear and pick a few for me?”
Tiffany eyed the house and the string of Christmas lights hanging from the eaves. There was an orderly squad of cactus plants in coffee and soup cans on the porch. And were those two bulky plastic garbage bags filled with aluminum cans? Bundled cardboard for recycling? Her parents had warned her about such a ploy—a nice woman begging for help and the next moment you, an innocent victim, are tied up in a van and going somewhere nasty.
“Nah, I ain’t got time,” Tiffany answered. Under her breath, she swore, “*!@! no.”
Tiffany walked away, throwing back a few Tic Tac breath mints. But as she sucked on those wintry pellets, she became troubled by her manners. The old lady could have been her grandmother—she was Mexican and brown as a penny. She had long ropy braids like her grandmother, too. Why did I do that? she wondered. She was just a little old viejita. She just wanted a couple of oranges from her tree. She spat the Tic Tacs from her mouth. She didn’t know why she did that either.
“Whatever,” Tiffany concluded, feeling a brief pang as she walked down the street.
• • •
A few minutes later she was at Beatrice’s house. She rapped on the front door where a plastic Christmas wreath still hung, and pushed the door open when no one answered. Her face was immediately enveloped by the over-warm living room. Tiffany expected Beatrice’s eyes to be pooled with tears when she arrived. Where was the mascara running like sludge down her cheeks? The pouting mouth? Where were the shoulder-heaving sobs and the box of Kleenex on the coffee table? Instead, Beatrice’s eyes were bright with laughter.
“You should see what that #@!*# girl is wearing,” Beatrice said, her hand on her stomach.
Tiffany glanced at the program on television. A chubby girl in an orange tank top was standing in front of a 360-degree mirror. Tiffany had a tank top not unlike the girl’s somewhere in her drawers. But on her, it looked cute. On this old Barbie doll with stringy hair … ugly.
“I thought you would be all sad?” Tiffany asked as she sat down next to Beatrice on the couch, ready to raise her arms and hug her best friend. She rested her hand on Beatrice’s knee.
“Nah,” Beatrice answered without looking at her. Her eyes were on the television and her smile was undulating like a wave.
This was not what Tiffany expected. No, she expected a heart-to-heart talk—and she would have it! Tiffany took the remote from the coffee table and pressed the off button. The chubby girl, flanked by Stacy and Clinton from What Not to Wear, disappeared, though their images clung at the back of Tiffany’s mind. Right then, she decided to get rid of her orange tank top.
Beatrice turned to Tiffany, her mouth open and snarling. “Why did you *!@*! do that? I was watching!”
“I want to hear about Manuel,” Tiffany answered, scooting a few inches from Beatrice, who scooted a few more inches away. It looked like a face-off.
“Hear *!$%@*! what?” Beatrice tried to swipe the remote from Tiffany’s hand, but Tiffany was quick enough to swing it behind her back.
“Give it to me!” Beatrice scolded. “I mean it!”
“Nah, tell me first.”
“Give it to me, I said!”
Tiffany didn’t like the rage on her best friend’s face, or her struggle against Beatrice’s arms snaking around her waist trying to get the remote. Beatrice seemed genuinely mad, but about what? That Tiffany had turned off the television? Still, Tiffany braved repeating herself. “I want to hear about Manuel.” She was going to add how Manuel was such a *!&*! but she decided that she should just keep those words inside her.
Beatrice stopped, caught her breath, and softened. Her hands came to her mouth as she hid her smile. She bowed her head and stomped her feet on to the carpet. She looked up at Tiffany. “I’m going to be famous.”
Tiffany offered a confused look.
“Like really famous,” Beatrice said as she bounced on the couch. She explained that within twenty-four hours Manuel’s photo of her eating that cheesy burrito had jumped from Manuel’s cell phone to a friend’s cell phone. The image had jumped like a virus from cell phone to cell phone—all this before Manuel posted the image on Facebook, where it was being eyeballed around the clock. Beatrice had received phone calls and text messages confirming sightings in Rhode Island. There was a chance that her image would leap over to England by nightfall.
“That’s terrible,” Tiffany remarked.
“Terrible?” Beatrice arched her eyebrows. “It’s like everyone’s going to know my face.”
“But with a string of @#!&! cheese hanging from your chin?”
“Yeah, but still!”
“Still what? Don’t you think it’s like ##@!& embarrassing?” Tiffany peeled off her gloves, as if getting ready for a bare-knuckled fight with Beatrice about how embarrassing it was.
“Tiffany, my face is going everywhere. People will be text messaging me internationally.” She reached down to a bowl of peanuts and threw a few into her mouth. She spoke with her mouth open, revealing the crunched, semi-crunched, and uncrunched peanuts. “It’s like I’m finally going to be famous, like that girl on television.”
Tiffany remembered the chubby girl in the orange tank top. If that was fame, Tiffany figured, they could have it.
Silence filled the room.
“What’s your *!@*&! problem?” Beatrice finally asked. “And give me the remote!”
Tiffany was hurt. She had walked in the terrible cold to comfort her best friend, and now that friend was scolding her? “I was just trying to be supportive.”
Beatrice snapped on the television. Stacy and Clinton were dumping clothes into a garbage can and criticizing the woman in the orange tank top. Beatrice hoisted a smile to her face.
“I got to go,” Tiffany said in a clipped voice. Her friend didn’t seem to need comforting. What Not to Wear could do that for her.
“Nah, girl—don’t go!” Beatrice apologized for her outburst.
Tiffany felt a little better and sat back down. She scratched a mustard stain on the leather couch. She flicked the flakes into an ashtray on the coffee table. “Are we going to go?” Tiffany asked.
“Go where?” Beatrice asked, genuinely puzzled by the question.
“To the mall.”
“Can’t do,” Beatrice replied. She reached for another handful of peanuts. She poured a few into her mouth, chewed a little, shook the remainder in her palm like dice, and said, “I got to take care of Jenny’s baby.”
Jenny was Beatrice’s older sister. She had the baby with a guy who was now in prison—two years to pump weights for stealing a Hummer, a vehicle so poor on gas mileage they laughed that car dealers couldn’t give it away.
“Jenny’s staying with us,” Beatrice added.
“Your sister?” Tiffany looked around. “Where is she? Asleep?” Jenny was known to party until dawn.
“At the mall or something,” Beatrice answered. She tossed the remaining peanuts into her mouth. “The baby’s asleep.”
Just then, Jenny’s baby came tottering into the living room. Her eyes were large and her light-brown hair tousled. Her cheeks were pink from just waking up.
“She is so, so cute!” Tiffany sang. “Come here, sweetie.” Tiffany raised her arms for the baby to come.
But the baby just stood there. She yawned and rubbed her eyes with her fists.
“You can’t get any cuter! I swear!” The baby is about two, Tiffany figured. “What’s her name?”
“Maria,” Beatrice answered and frowned. “Give me a *!@*! break! Ain’t there enough Marias in the *$@*! world?”
Tiffany stiffened at her best friend’s outburst. It was cruel and ugly. “No, we need all the precious Marias in the world. It’s a classic name.”
“Classic?” Beatrice muttered.
“Classic and symbolic,” Tiffany defended.
“Whatever.” Beatrice sulked, slouched into the couch, and changed the channel.
Tiffany was irate. How could Beatrice think of he
r niece as just another Maria? She swallowed the cuss words that almost shot out like lightning in her friend’s direction. How dare she speak about her little niece in such a manner! Instead, Tiffany resolved to be calm and asked, “Does she talk yet?”
“Like a *$!@# parrot,” Beatrice answered as she sat up. She made cooing sounds at the baby. “Maria want a cracker?Maria want a peanut?”
Maria clapped her hands and did a little jig, turning in a circle like a toy. Her large eyes squinted. Her smile revealed her tiny, white teeth. She then ran to Beatrice, who hugged her and pushed a peanut into Maria’s mouth. The smiling baby began to chew on the peanut and immediately began to choke.
“Baby’s okay?” Tiffany asked, her brow pleated in worry.
The baby’s oval-shaped face began to turn red and her eyes, already large, seemed to get even larger. Drool seeped from her lower lip.
“Are you okay, Maria?” Tiffany asked as she went to her knees and placed a hand behind the baby’s back. She tapped the baby’s back and said, “Cough it up. Be a good girl and cough it up.” Tiffany wiped the drool on her sleeve.
The baby appeared startled. A pinkish hand went to her mouth and came out slimy.
“She can’t breathe!” Tiffany shouted. She rubbed the baby’s back and tapped it softly and then harder when the baby’s face began to turn purple and a single tear rolled down her cheek.
“Do something!” Beatrice cried as she leaped from the couch on to the floor. “Jenny’s going to be mad!”
Tiffany turned the baby upside down like a salt shaker. She shook the baby, cried in panic, “Come on, Maria, cough it up,” and drummed her fist against her back until the peanut flopped on to the carpet. Tiffany righted the baby and set her on the couch. The purple in her face slowly drained to a pinkish flush while she gasped for air.
“Man, you scared us,” Beatrice yelled at Maria. She dabbed roughly at the drool on the baby’s chin. “Don’t do that again!”