I didn’t like the dress she brought me. It had white lace with a thick glossy belt and was long enough to reach my feet. I left it on the bed and went to the bathroom and showered for a long time, so long it was the longest I’ve ever been in there. I pushed the shower head away from me and lathered myself with Ivory soap while steam fogged the mirror. I rubbed between my toes and under my armpits, everywhere I never usually clean, because I wanted to be clean. I had black jeans and a black shirt that had a touring schedule for a Selena concert on the back. But the front was solid black.
“Uh-uh, mama,” Tencha said when I opened the door. She was sitting on one of the chairs against the wall in the hallway, with a black shawl over her head. “You’re not going dressed like that.”
I motioned toward the front door.
“Mama! ¡Por favor! You’re not going like that.” She opened her hands like if she wanted me to take off my clothes and give them to her.
I waited for her to stand up.
On the way out Larry said good-bye and reminded us that I had to be back before seven. He was sorry, but it was the rules. I didn’t see Julia anywhere. I thought she’d walk us to the car and act like some caregiver or something. But I didn’t see her. It was Saturday.
They let Tencha take me in her car, even though there was an officer following us the whole time. I stared out the window and wanted to ask if we could go somewhere else, to Astroworld or the Galleria. I didn’t want to see anyone that would make me feel like if I were carrying bricks in my pockets.
It didn’t hit me until we were in Magnolia Park, near our old house, that I’d see the Silvas. That they probably knew everything that happened. I thought of Buelita Fe and felt sick. When we passed a McDonald’s I pointed to it and tried to get Tencha to stop. But she said no. We couldn’t be late. She didn’t know what had gotten into me.
The parking lot was half-full when we got there. On the way inside I stepped into a puddle because I was staring at a house across the street, at a black Doberman sleeping near the front steps.
Tencha grabbed me by the hand and pulled me toward the entrance. There was hardly anyone inside except for the Silvas and a few neighbors I recognized. At the altar, behind Padre Félix, was the coffin, closed with white roses over it. I wanted to sit behind everyone, but Tencha kept walking, pulling me forward. We passed the pews and I kept my head down. As soon as we sat in the first row I heard those words, “En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo, del Espíritu Santo, Amen.”
Then everyone stood up.
The last time I’d been there I was sitting in our usual spot, on the left side about ten pews back. I turned my head, because I wanted to see if we were still there: Mom, Papi, Estrella, and me. But Buelita Fe was there, staring at me and grabbing her elbows like if she were hugging herself.
The whole time I felt like if she were next to me. Because she could’ve been. So what if she was, kneeling and praying the way she used to when Mom would get up and take communion. I wanted to hear her voice. But all I could hear was Padre Félix and the organ in the corner behind him.
Maybe she had nothing to say to me.
I stayed close to Tencha after communion because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. They’d want to know how I was doing or tell me how sorry they were. They’d tell me that things happen. Accidents happen. Or maybe they wouldn’t say anything at all.
When we were outside, Tía Hilda tried to get me to look at her, but I kept my head down and looked at my shoes, my black Adidas with the word SAMBA on them. Buelita Fe was the only one that didn’t push me. She grabbed my hand and patted it, then wiped my face like if it was dirty, and now it was clean. When I smelled her dishwashing soap on her hands, it was like my insides started folding and I started crying, keeping my mouth shut so they wouldn’t hear me.
In the car on our way back to the center I wanted to tell Tencha I was sorry for not wearing the dress she bought me. I was sorry I didn’t want to go to the cemetery or the reception. But all I wanted was to go see Papi. She kept driving and looking forward like if there was nothing else to do but go back to the center.
Then I said something, something stupid that came to my mind. It was the first time I opened my mouth since it happened. The first time I said anything.
“Why don’t we go back to Mexico?”
She paused for a moment, looking at me then back at the road. I guess she needed a moment to realize that I’d spoken. She tried not to make a big deal about it. Like if she knew all along it would come. “I love you. Lo sabes, ¿verdad?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“But why would you say that?”
“Because.” I looked at her and wiped my face.
“You want to go to school in Mexico and leave your Papi? Is that what you want? I love you. You know that, right? But you don’t want to go back to Mexico,” she said. “It’s better for you here.”
I looked down at my lap with my palms over my thighs. “It doesn’t mean I don’t love her,” I said.
“I know, mama,” she said. “I know.”
EL MÚSICO
There was a singing competition on Siempre en Domingo for kids. We were sitting around the television at Buelita Fe’s one weekend, rooting for the ones we thought should win. Some of them came out wearing dresses like holiday decorations. They shimmied their shoulders and couldn’t sing to save their lives, but because they were show-offs they got a lot of applause. One little boy came out dressed as a mariachi and sang a Tony Aguilar song, singing as strong as a rooster with a voice that got everyone’s attention. Buelita Fe said she’d seen an interview with him earlier that day, and his name was Federico. He was from a town in the middle of nowhere and was real poor. This was his big chance. His mother and father asked the church for money so he could get to Siempre en Domingo for the competition. In the interview he said, “This is for my mother and father, because we don’t have any money. We only have one bed. If I win, I’ll work hard because I want us to move out of our small house. I want to buy my father a truck so he doesn’t have to take the bus anymore. And maybe on weekends, we can go to the beach.” Buelita Fe was crying by the time she finished telling us.
I looked at Papi and asked, “Why is she crying?”
“Because,” he said. “She cries at everything.”
“But what’s so sad about that? He’s good, he’s probably going to win.”
“He wants to buy his father a truck. And he wants to go to the beach.”
“That’s why she’s crying?”
“Yeah, that’s why.”
I listened to that boy sing. He stood with his arms down next to him and looked out to the audience with his eyes full of everything his mom and dad had taught him. When he was almost done, singing his last note, making a face like if he were trying to lift a car, I felt something light up inside of me. Not because he was poor or because he wanted to go to the beach but because his voice was so strong it pressed in the middle of my chest. When the song finished, Buelita Fe dried her cheeks with a bunched-up tissue she’d been holding the entire competition.
LA CORONA
Mom was the last one to close the door, looking over her shoulder, as if to remind me, “That’s what you get for being una chiflada.”
I didn’t want to play with Estrella’s friends anyway. It was her birthday party. She turned twelve and all the presents were for her.
I was on my third cheeseburger when I saw the man walk in. He had a gym bag over his shoulder with red Bozo shoes on. He walked straight to the bathroom in the back of the restaurant, and ten minutes later he came out as Ronald McDonald with white makeup on and a red afro. When he passed me, he winked and said, “Our secret, right?”
I could see the stubble under his white makeup and he smelled like bacon. He thought I was playing along, but really, I didn’t care. He leaned over and asked who the birthday girl was. I looked outside. Estrella and her friend Angélica were swinging on a chained tire. Other kids were running around, screaming, �
�You’re it! You’re it!” Mom and her friends were sitting in their hips, looking at the highway. A girl with thick glasses sitting at the end of the monkey bars reminded me of La Chilindrina from El chavo del ocho, except she didn’t have any freckles. She lived on Market, in a red house that didn’t look like the others. Estrella didn’t hang out with her and neither did I. I don’t know how she was invited. Mom probably told her, because she wanted us to be friends with her.
Chilindrina was looking at us. I took a bite from my cheeseburger and pointed at her. With my mouth full I said, “The girl with the glasses.”
Ronald McDonald stepped out onto the playground and spread his arms open like an airplane. He had a paper crown around his elbow, gold with ruby stickers on it. Estrella ran toward him but he walked past her and straight to Chilindrina. He took the crown from his arm and placed it over her head and must’ve said Happy Birthday, or something. He grabbed her with both arms and lifted her off the wooden deck. Mom walked toward him, shaking her hand, while Estrella grabbed the crown and put it on. Then they turned, and he pointed at me.
I ran to the handicapped bathroom and locked the door and waited for an hour before I came out. By then I figured the coast was clear. When I walked out Ronald McDonald was sitting in a booth with his wig on the table. And when I walked past him I stuck out my tongue. “Our secret, right?” I said.
Nothing outside had changed. Everyone was still playing the same games as before.
On the table where I was sitting was the bent, deformed crown that was supposed to be for the birthday girl. I put it on and went outside and climbed the wooden deck, sat down next to Chilindrina and asked her if she’d ever seen El chavo del ocho.
LA ROSA
We had rosebushes in the front yard. You’d think it was Mom’s idea, but it wasn’t. It was Papi’s. He wanted rosebushes because they reminded him of La Virgen de Guadalupe.
We were drunk and had come back from a wedding reception for Papi’s boss’s daughter. He told Papi we should go and have a good time because there was going to be a margarita fountain. There wasn’t going to be much tequila in it so it was okay. “Your family will have a good time,” he said. And when Papi came home and told us we ran to our rooms and got dressed as fast as we could. But he called out and said, “Not now! The wedding’s tomorrow.”
The following day Estrella put on a dress and wore her white satin shoes. I wore jeans and a shirt. Nothing fancy. When we got there Papi headed straight for the fountain while Mom, Estrella, and I sat at a long table at the end of the room where no one else was sitting. We didn’t know anyone and all we wanted was a margarita. I convinced Mom that it was a good idea to have a drink because we had to show respect to the people getting married.
There’s always barbacoa at weddings and so I asked if I could get some. Mom said okay, but not too much. She reminded me to watch my manners.
I nodded but then grabbed two paper plates and piled it with frijoles, arroz, tortillas, chorizo and barbacoa. When I got back to the table Papi had four margaritas in clear plastic cups in his hands with limes hooked on the rim. Mom pushed her lips together like if it was a bad idea, but then took a sip and started dancing with Papi.
In the car on the way home Mom asked us how we felt, but then she laughed and rolled her eyes like if she’d forgotten the question. The car felt like a boat and everything moved twice as much as it should’ve, but I could still bring everything into focus. It was Estrella who looked like she was going to faint or throw up, and Papi told her to stick her head out the window to get some air. She had drunk three cups, and I had four.
“Como la flor” came on the radio and we started singing real loud, real bad, all together. Out the windows and in each other’s faces. We didn’t know the words but we made them up and it didn’t matter. When the chorus came, we turned into one big voice and screamed so loud we felt each other’s breath on our skin. Ayyyyy, cómo me duele.
When we got home and pulled into the driveway, like a borracha, Estrella got out of the car and ran around the house singing the chorus as loud as she could. She looked stupid and funny with her arms above her head until she ran through the rosebushes, and she didn’t even know it, not at first. But I could see it in her eyes. She felt something. Then she touched her face and felt the blood and started screaming like if someone had cut off her hands. All dramatic. I mean, they were just scratches. Mom pulled her into the house, screaming to Papi, “¡Ya ves! ¡Mira lo que hiciste!”
Estrella sat on the kitchen table looking up at the light as Mom patted her face with a wet towel. Her dress was spotted with drops of blood, like roses, and it reminded me of the story about El indio and La Virgen de Guadalupe. She appeared on his poncho a long time ago when no one believed she existed, when no one believed we had our own mother in the sun. She appeared out of nowhere on top of a mountain outside Mexico City and asked El indio to collect roses for her, and to take them to the bishop who wanted proof that he’d really seen her and that she was real. When El indio carried the roses in his tilma to the bishop and released the corners of the fabric, dropping the roses to his feet, there she was on his chest, La Virgen de Guadalupe. It was the first time we knew what she looked like, the first time You gave us a sign. We saw her hands pressed together and her head tilted to the side. And her dark skin. And her soft face. And her almost-closed eyes.
All because of the roses.
LA ESCALERA
I used to chase Estrella around the house and hang out in front where the sidewalk is, saying hi to the people who passed by on their way to the supermarket. When I’d get bored, I’d grab the ladder from the garage and climb it to the roof. From there I could look down and see Estrella and all of Magnolia Park. She wouldn’t notice me. She’d be wearing her sunglasses and flip through the stations on a portable radio and act like she was a teenager already, like the girls who would pass in their boyfriends’ cars, sitting in the passenger side with the window rolled down and their hair pulled back, wearing their bikini for a top. I could tell by the way Estrella looked at them that she hoped they’d notice her and her dark sunglasses she thought were so cool. She’d roll up her tank top so it looked like a bikini, and from the roof of the house I could see the cars passing by and the guys who drove them. They were always bigheaded and lowrider looking, blasting cumbias from a piece of shit car that might break into pieces by the time it got to the corner.
After I got bored, I’d climb down the ladder and go inside, lie down on the couch and listen to the fan in front of the window. Mom would either be cleaning or on the phone talking to someone in Mexico.
Papi by then was getting better, but he was still drinking, just not as much.
Around that time there’d been a family talk. Estrella and I were in our room and Mom told us to come to the kitchen. She had two cups of coffee and two cups of Abuelita hot chocolate. “Where’s the marshmallows?” I asked, trying to be funny.
“We ran out,” she said. “Stop talking and listen.”
Papi had just showered and was clean-shaven. He’d combed his hair and was drinking coffee like if it was morning. He told us that he wasn’t going to drink anymore. That it wasn’t good for him. Mom was sitting next to him, nodding at every word he said.
“It’s not good for you,” he said. And I thought, It’s not good for you, either.
But a week or two later, instead of staying in the living room he went to the garage and acted like he was working on his truck. It made funny sounds when he turned it on, but I don’t think there was anything wrong with it.
When I went out there to see what he was doing I could smell Don Pedro on him. Sometimes, to be nice, I’d start singing rancheras to see if he wanted to sing, but he’d prop open the hood and start checking things like if he was in the middle of something. And because he was in the garage, I couldn’t get the ladder and climb to the roof. Because if he saw me he wouldn’t let me. But from there I would’ve been able to see what he was doing, even though I already k
new.
EL ALACRÁN
Mom would put on a face when other people were around, like when we’d go to the Silvas or to the supermarket. People would think she was sweet and kind, running errands in the neighborhood with her two daughters. They’d say, “The taller one looks like you,” then look at me and not say a word.
We’d go to Kmart and Estrella would get something she wanted, either another pair of colored pencils for the books she liked to draw in or a new pair of pink stockings she might one day use for her Quinceañera. I asked for a skateboard once but I didn’t get it, even after I asked nicely. We got in the car and Mom turned around and said I was being a pain in the ass. She had a lot of errands to run and if I kept pestering her I was going to make her blow up. She grabbed the steering wheel like if we were about to crash and said, “You want me to blow up?” Sometimes she’d turn around and pinch me, and all that sweetness people thought she was turned into something picoso. Papi used to call her una pinche loca because when she lost it, she really lost it. And if he called her una pinche loca she’d call him un hijo de puta. And that would start the fighting.
Papi hated the word puta because of that time with Memo, the way he probably saw my hand on his dick even though I’d never touched it because his pants were on the whole time. Papi’d see my face when he’d hear the word puta or putita, and I think Mom knew that. She’d say it on purpose because it would remind him of me. Then he’d remember how he broke my hand even though it was an accident.
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