Eli surprised me by fisting the front of my shirt and yanking me forward, his eyes that much more menacing with the skeletal décor. “I want to sleep next to ye every night for all my nights. I don’t care if it’s in our bed, at a grave, or on the bleeding moon. Next time something big in your life comes up, I want to know about it.” His smoldering gaze fixed me with heaviness that made my throat constrict. “Ye didn’t tell me about today, Vi.”
I blinked up at him, unsure how to absorb his devotion that always caught me off-guard. “I didn’t want to bring you down. Besides, we’re still new to each other. I didn’t want to scare you.” I pointed to my face paint, knowing some people didn’t understand the beauty in Mexican traditions. “But I can bring you a sleeping bag tonight, if you like.”
“It only scares me when we’re apart, not when we’re close. Let me be close, Mouse. I’ll be gentle with ye. I want to be Mr. and Mrs. Skeleton.”
I swallowed hard, both of us melting when I wound my arms around his neck, drawing him in for the hug we both needed. “I can be better at this – at letting you in. Thanks for being amazing today. You helped to make it not as terrible as I thought it would be.”
“You’re only saying tha because my sugar skull was worse than yours.”
I chuckled at him. “It’s nice to not come in last place anymore.”
He squeezed my side, making me giggle. “I’ll see ye after work, Mrs. Skeleton.” Then, he shifted so he could stare into my eyes, whispering a fervent, “Mrs. O’Sullivan.”
My shallow intake of breath stole all my words, leaving me with no intelligible response to him labeling me with his last name. For the worst day ever, Eli was intent to give me something lovely to hold onto. I gazed up at him with admiration, wondering what someone so perfect could possibly see in a mess like me. “See you tonight, Mr. O’Sullivan.”
Caty pointed at us with a stern look on her face. “Do not kiss. You can think about it, but no smearing my artwork. You two are my masterpieces.”
With the way Eli’s thumb grazed over the curve of my hip, I actually started feeling like Caty might be right. Together, it felt like Eli and I were indeed works of art. Mr. and Mrs. Skeleton, indeed.
26
Dia De Los Muertos
Brady rolled out his sleeping bag between Caty’s and mine, a look of apprehension on his face. There was a light that shone from one of the mausoleums in the distance, but other than that, we carried flashlights and the small lantern my mom had used to illuminate the way every year. The leaves crackled underfoot, making Brady jumpy, and pushing a smile to my cheeks.
Brady glanced around, as if he expected ghosts might rise up and grip him around the throat. “Okay, true confessions? Every year, I was glad Mama Rodriquez was with us. Not to be a giant baby, but sleeping in a graveyard? A little scary for me, and probably most humans.”
I chuckled at Brady’s nerves and smoothed out my sleeping bag. He’d joined our little family later in life, only spending eight nights in the graveyard, unlike Caty, who had been doing this through her adolescence and adulthood. “Stay close,” she told him. “I’ll protect you.”
My sleeping bag spot was directly over my mama, and made me feel almost like I was cuddled up next to her in bed, the way we did when I’d been little. Then when I’d insisted I was too big to share a bed with my mommy anymore, I still meandered back to her, sleeping in her arms whenever one of us got sick or lonesome.
Caty fumbled around in her purse, her face falling in the subtle glow of the lantern’s light. “Oh, man! I think I left all my orange and black crappy peanut butter candies on Ana Rodriquez’s grave.”
“It’s okay. I’m sure Mama won’t mind sharing. She hated those things.”
Caty stood, frustrated with herself as she brushed the stray grass and leaves from her jeans. “I got them specifically to make her laugh, and now I don’t have them. I’ll be back. I put too many on Ana’s grave.”
Brady stood, as I knew he would. “No way am I letting you traipse around in a graveyard by yourself in the dark. It’s like wearing a giant sandwich board that says, ‘Murder me. Here’s a grave. Go ahead and dump my body inside. No one will ever find it.’”
“That’s quite the sandwich board,” I sniggered.
He snatched up the lantern and slid his arm around Caty. “Plus, this place is massive. You’ll take the good light, and I’m too big a chicken to sit around in the dark.”
Caty giggled at him, and then called over her shoulder to me. “You alright here, Vi? Or do you want to come with?”
“I’m good here.” After they walked off, I slid into my sleeping bag on my belly, my fists stacked atop my mother’s plaque, and my chin resting on my hands. I stared down at her scripted name, recalling how many years we’d camped out in this very graveyard. I never guessed I’d be sleeping here without her – or with her like this.
My mother’s relatives were all in Mexico, so we’d scoured the graveyard for another Rodriquez we could pretend we were related to. Ana Concepcion Rodriquez didn’t have anyone else with the same last name around her, so we adopted her into our little circle, making her our own. We pretended she’d been stolen away from her wealthy parents at a young age, grew in poverty with nothing but gruel sandwiches, her morals and can-do attitude. Then when Ana was a teenager, she went in search of her family.
It was a tearful reunion when fake Ana was welcomed into the family she’d always known was out there. They showered her with love, kisses, presents, and an elephant because, well, Caty had a healthy imagination. Love, kisses and presents hadn’t seemed like enough to her.
In our rendition of Ana’s life, she’d died peacefully in her sleep as an old woman, surrounded by her family, and the gardener. Julio had admired her from afar as he’d pruned the roses at her family’s estate, but only ever got up the courage to kiss the back of her hand. We always brought flowers for Ana’s grave from fake Julio, swooning at the romance of their unrequited love.
We’d slept on Ana’s grave every year. Now that I had my mother in the ground, I knew where I would be spending every November 1st for the rest of my life.
Brady and Caty came back forty-five minutes later, their eyes wide as they rejoined me. “What’s up with you two? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” I let out a perfunctory laugh and clapped my hands at my terrible joke. The spirits of the dead were supposed to walk around on the Dia de Los Muertos, searching for treats and their loved ones. They were granted one night a year to rise from their graves and go bonkers, reuniting with family and friends who camped out on their graves to greet them.
“Nothing happened!” they both exclaimed, looking guilty. Then Caty folded herself into the sleeping bag and set a few pieces of my mom’s least favorite candy on her plaque, next to our row of sugar skulls. “How’s Mama?”
“I think she’d be glad her traditions didn’t die with her. I’m glad you guys came tonight. It wouldn’t be the same without you. Thanks for pushing me to get out of bed. I needed this.”
“Anytime,” Caty smiled, situating the lantern next to the gravestone, so we could see each other a little better.
I smoothed away a leaf that had fallen onto my mother’s no-frills plaque, studying her name and timeline as Brady tucked in between us. It was such a simple thing, the dash between her birth year and her death. “That’s all we get,” I mused in my shifting melancholy, tracing the line that summed up her entire life. “Just a dash to the end.”
Brady’s features grew tense, his eyebrows pulling together, and his mouth in a tight line. “We need to make our dashes count, then. Vi, you’ve only got four things on the bucket list. It’s time we started crossing them off.”
“Hello, we can’t afford France yet.”
Brady shook his head. “We can’t afford not to go. We can’t afford cancer. We can’t afford getting older. Now’s the time, Vi. We’re putting something on the calendar. By this time next year, I want France crossed off Violet’s bucke
t list.”
I shot him an appreciative smile. “But that list belongs to all of us.”
Brady smirked at me. “Then I guess we’ll all have to go.”
Brady’s finger traced the small engraved line with mine, and then Caty added her finger to the mix. We scooted closer to each other, knowing that we might not know what our respective dashes would hold, but certain we would go through it all together.
We told a few more stories, and exchanged a couple cheeky jokes before we fell asleep – three skeletons content to snooze their troubles away in a graveyard.
When Eli found us some time after three in the morning, he kissed my cheek and snuggled into the extra sleeping bag I’d laid out for him. He cuddled up next to me, swallowing my form in his embrace that I prayed would never let me go.
I smiled as I drifted off in his arms, knowing that if he insisted on being part of my family, there was a chance I could stay in his arms forever.
27
January Thirtieth
“I’ve got to say, I didn’t see this coming. You’re usually such a team player.” Keith stared at me across his desk, his brown eyes boring into me with a penetration that felt physical. “I had no idea it was all about the money to you.”
I hadn’t been prepared for a harsh rebuttal. I’d gone over my speech at least a dozen times with Eli on the way back from the graveyard, before I’d left for work, and hadn’t flubbed a single word. Now that Keith’s disappointment was weighing down on me, I felt my stomach start to twist. “Of course I like helping where I can, but I don’t have the time right now. I already wrote up eight grant proposals for you and submitted them. If you want to apply for more, I can’t keep being the one who picks up the slack. I just don’t have the time.”
“You’re a single woman, and I’ve got a wife and a child to split my time between. Are you telling me that you have less time than me?” He shook his head. “I thought we were friends, but after the way your roommates yelled at me for no reason yesterday, I’m starting to wonder if that’s true.”
I’d seen Keith get snappy and petty like this with the other workers, but never with me. I was his golden employee, the one he consulted harder cases with, and occasionally leaned on when he was overwhelmed. I cleared my throat and kept my chin level to the ground. “When is my birthday, Keith?” I asked as calmly as I could. I felt like vomiting, but I knew I couldn’t lose it in his office and still respect myself.
He squinted at me in confusion. “I can’t see how that’s relevant.”
“If we were good enough friends to where I would stay up night after night doing this favor for you by writing the grants, coming in to cover your butt on my days off, then you would know my birthday. You’re asking me to do you a personal favor with these grants, otherwise it would be a work-related task. If that was the case, I would be paid my normal hourly rate for it. I’m the first one here, even before you, and the last one to leave most nights. I’ve more than proved my loyalty. Do you want to take advantage of good-natured, helpful people?” I knew I’d taken it one too far, but I was already so close to a panic attack, I figured I might as well go all out.
His nostrils on his snub nose flared. “That’s how you see this? I ask you to help the clinic, and now I’m taking advantage of you?”
“No. Not at first, but now that I’m telling you I can’t, you’re trying to pressure me into taking over a project that was never in my job description, and one you’re not even paying me for. If I’m going to be losing this much sleep over it, my paycheck should reflect that. Don’t you think? Wouldn’t you tell your daughter the same thing in my situation?”
Keith narrowed his eyes at me. “I thought we weren’t friends. You’re trying to play on my sympathies now. Is this you telling me you want to quit? I’ve got to tell you, Violet, I never thought of you as a quitter.”
I could feel my heartbeat in my cheeks. The shame and angst that flooded me as I sat in the squeaky chair in his office was overwhelming. It was then I knew that Eli, Caty, Brady and Mr. Li were right; Keith had been taking advantage of my work ethic. My mother wouldn’t want this life for me. It’s not what she sacrificed so hard for. She scrubbed toilets for strangers so I could go to college and get the job of my dreams. When she was on her hands and knees, thinking happy thoughts about me, I know she didn’t picture me falling asleep on the living room floor, and working for free. I cleared my throat and tried to hold my mother’s dignity in my heart. “No, sir. This is me telling you I want to do my regular work, and not a grant writer’s job. None of the other therapists are labeled ‘not team players’ because they’re not writing grants until one in the morning. I need energy to do my actual job, Keith.”
Keith sat back in his chair, his fingers tented in front of his mouth as he stared at me in thought. “Very well. Since you’re so overwhelmed, I don’t want to take that lightly. How about I cut your overtime, so you can catch up on your sleep? I don’t want to be accused of running a sweat shop.”
My teeth ground together, and it took everything inside of me not to point out that I was the only Hispanic person on staff, and he was making sweat shop jokes to me while working me to the bone. “Whatever you think is best. I’m sure Kira, Seth, Elaine, Michelle, Doug and Brittney would love to take back the patients they passed on. You get to deliver the good news to them. Was it Elaine who threw her back out trying to lift up Mr. Henderson? Or was that two weeks she collected disability from you for something else? Oh, I know. The disability you paid was to Doug, and it was when Mr. Barumian’s knee gave out because Doug sucks at diagnosing people. Doug threw his back out when Mr. Barumian fell on him, poor thing.” I winced, as if feeling Keith’s financial pain he’d had to absorb during those catastrophes. “How much did that set you back? Was it more or less than paying me overtime to treat the patients the other therapists can’t handle?” Before Keith could collect himself and say something hurtful, I stood. “Look, I’m tired of the games. I need sleep, and you need me. Work it out, chief. Give the grant writing assignment to Seth, and see if he doesn’t laugh in your face at being given more work to do with no extra pay. Bottom line? Mess with my overtime, my schedule, or anything else that lets me be at my best for your company, and I’ll work somewhere else.”
Behind the bravado Keith scrambled to scrape together on the fly, I could see him sweating. “You are not irreplaceable. This kind of attitude isn’t going to get you a raise. You’re up for a review in two months. You know, why don’t we do your evaluation right now? I’m in a stellar mood for it.”
I couldn’t believe he would outright threaten my livelihood like that. Without thinking it through, I rolled my shoulders back and stared down my nose at him. “Don’t bother.” Perhaps I was loopy from sleeping in the graveyard, or maybe my mother’s spirit truly had risen to give me a blast of her courage. I felt her indignation rise up in me, emboldening me where I’d been timid and agreeable before. “Consider this my two-week notice.”
The charade of who had more to lose was dropped, along with Keith’s jaw on the floor. Neither of us expected I would ever have the nerve to leave the job I cherished. In that conversation, I saw very clearly that Keith observed my love for the work, and used it to manipulate me – milking me for free labor. He’d been dumping the harder cases on me, and assigning shifts that would overwhelm anyone who kept up the twelve-plus-hour workdays for as long as I had.
“You don’t mean that, Vi. Come on. Sit down. We both said things we didn’t mean.” Keith motioned to the empty chair I refused to reclaim.
Very calmly and quietly, I rested my pointer finger in the center of his oak desk. “January thirtieth.”
“You’ll stay on longer than January. You know we can’t afford to lose you. Think about your clients who rely on you to get better. You’re really going to abandon them because we had our first fight?”
I closed my eyes and lowered my voice to a whisper. “My birthday is January thirtieth, Keith. Last year on my birthday,
I worked thirteen hours. My mama had just been diagnosed with breast cancer a couple months before, and we wanted to spend the day together. That was the last birthday I could’ve celebrated with her, but I spent it here instead. I opened and I closed because you asked me to. You shorted me an hour that paycheck, telling me I went over seventy hours for the week, and there was a new policy you were putting into place that said you’d only pay us up to seventy hours. You knew what you did, and you didn’t care. I’m telling you, I’m out in two weeks.” Inside my chest, I could feel Caty, Brady, Eli, Mr. Li and my mother all cheering for me. “Push me on it, and I won’t even give you that.”
Then Keith surprised us both by not arguing, but hanging his head as his shoulders deflated. “I didn’t know it was your birthday. I wouldn’t have done that, had I known.”
I tilted my head, remaining soft and steady so I didn’t scream at him, or worse, devolve into tears. “Not good enough, Keith. Two weeks to replace me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a patient to see, and you’ve got resumes to start reading.”
With all the self-respect I’d been shorting myself on, I gathered up my bearings and turned toward the door. As I ignored Keith’s stammered apologies that were too little and far too late, I felt my mother next to me, turning to cuss Keith out in Spanish as I walked my generous Rodriquez womanly hips out of my boss’ office.
28
Unemployed in a Miniskirt
“Breathe,” Caty urged me in a steady voice. Her dulcet sweetness wasn’t doing its usual magic to center me when my life felt out of control. She held the empty brown lunch bag to my mouth and patted my back. “Breathe, honey.”
The bag inflated and deflated over and over before I was positive my panic attack had passed. “What am I going to do, Caty? Why did I do that? I don’t have a plan for this!”
Violet’s Bucket List Page 19