Maybe it’s babyish—my sister would say so—but after everything that’s happened, I’m looking forward to Mom’s first-day breakfast. To something being the same as it used to be. Last Saturday, when Dad made his weekly check-in call, I asked him if he would drive up to Nana’s house so he could be here, too. He said he would try. I didn’t believe it, though. Not really. I don’t think he did either, and anyway, I’m not surprised he isn’t here this morning.
My sister is still asleep in her bed against the opposite wall. Her arms are flung over her head, but even when she’s sleeping, she seems so sure of herself. Unstoppable.
I wonder if Mom will bring Maribel breakfast in bed, too. It’s not the first day of school for her, since Maribel isn’t in school anymore, a subject she and Mom have been fighting about most of the summer.
A floorboard squeaks under the hallway carpet. I pull Nana’s crocheted afghan up around my neck and turn toward the wall, pretending to be asleep so Mom can wake me.
Then I listen more closely. These footsteps aren’t like Mom’s, not quiet and creeping. There’s no clink of dishes on a breakfast tray. I open my eyes, sit up, and see Nana silhouetted in the bedroom doorway.
“Mija?” she whispers. “Are you awake?”
“I’m awake. But where’s Mom?” I lean forward, trying to look beyond Nana, into the hallway.
Her shoulders drop. “Your mami left early to help Tía Carla open the salon for one of those too-important-for-business-hours clients of hers. Ven, I have breakfast ready for you in the kitchen.”
Just then, Maribel jolts upright and runs a hand through her hair. “Wait, she didn’t take my car, did she? I need it. I have Alma appointments scheduled all over town today.”
Nana grimaces. Maribel groans.
“What about Grandpa’s car?” I suggest.
My grandfather died when I was still a baby. I used to think that if I closed my eyes and tried hard enough, I might remember his voice. His smell. The color of his eyes. Something left over in my memory. But it never works.
Nana keeps his big, gold Crown Victoria parked on one side of the driveway. She doesn’t drive it very often, but she washes it every Saturday morning, no matter what.
“Sí,” Nana agrees. “If you take Griselda to school, you can borrow your grandfather’s car for the day.”
“Fine,” Maribel says. She yawns and drops back onto her pillow.
Nana checks her watch. “Ándale, then—both of you better get moving if you want to be on time.”
I stretch, swing my legs off the bed, and pull a pair of faded gray jeans out of my suitcase. I grew over the summer, and the pants are sort of short now. But if I cuff them at my ankle, it almost looks as if that’s the way they’re supposed to fit.
Next, I unfold a sleeveless button-up shirt, the same violet-blue of wild forget-me-nots. I haven’t worn it all month, half hoping that when I finally put it on again, it might feel like something new. Like last year, when Mom left a sundress with tags still attached hanging off my bedroom door for the first day of fifth grade.
It was that spring, the school year almost over, when Maribel and I got home and found Mom and Dad waiting for us on the living room sofa. Something was wrong. It wasn’t just that Dad was home so early. There were times when projects at work made him late for dinner every night for weeks on end, but other times were slower: mornings when he was still in pajamas, dunking crumbly pink polvorones in his coffee when I left for school, and afternoons when he was already at home, weeding our garden when I got back. Last spring was one of the slower times. Maybe it had gone on for a little longer than usual, but I hadn’t thought much about it.
Instead, what made everything seem wrong that day was how still Mom and Dad were, as if they were posing for an old-fashioned camera, the kind where, if you moved, it ruined the whole picture. No one was saying anything. No one was even looking at me. Outside, in the cul-de-sac, an ice-cream truck played “Pop Goes the Weasel.” I remember hoping that, whatever Mom and Dad had to tell us, they would hurry up and finish before the truck drove away. I wanted an orange Creamsicle. No kidding, that was the biggest thing I had to worry about back then. I thought.
Finally, Maribel walked into the living room and sat in an armchair opposite our parents. I followed her, relieved someone had broken the eerie quiet spell and actually done something, had unfrozen us.
“Is it your bid, Dad? What happened? Did you get the contract?”
I had no idea what Maribel was talking about, or how she knew what was going on. Dad dropped his head. Mom looked at him, then looked at us.
“No,” she told Maribel. “He did not get the contract.” Then she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if she were blowing out candles on a birthday cake, only she knew none of her wishes would ever come true. She clapped her hands on her knees and looked at me and then my sister. “Griselda, Maribel, listen. We are losing the house. We need you to know this is not forever—and everything’s going to be all right.” It was her gentle but steady voice. The voice that said, “Pay attention,” but also, “Don’t panic.” It was her voice for scraped knees and waking up from nightmares. “It might not seem like it at first, but everything is going to be just fine. Everything is fine—but we’re going to move in with Nana for a little while—”
Maribel interrupted. “So that’s it? You’re just going to stop trying? Game over?”
Dad got up off the couch, ran his hands through his thick black hair, and walked over to the window. “Maribel, I owe money to three different banks. No nursery within a hundred miles will sell me anything on credit anymore. The truck needs new brakes, and I can’t pay for those either. So, unless you won the lottery and forgot to tell us, then, yes. That’s it. Game over.”
“For how long?” she demanded.
“At least through the end of your senior year,” Mom said. Her voice was as steady as a heartbeat. Pay attention. Don’t panic. “We want you to graduate with your class. After that, I’m not sure—we need to sort some things out. Dad needs to find some more work.… You know we’re very lucky we have family we can turn—”
“Dad has to find some more work? Why can’t you get a job? What, little Griselda can’t survive without Mami at home to fix her an after-school snack every day?”
Dad wheeled around. “Maribel, you will not talk to your mother—”
Mom raised a hand to hush them both. She closed her eyes and swallowed. When she finally spoke, her words were quiet and clipped.
“Of course I’ll try to get a job. Of course I have been trying. But Maribel, it’s not that simple.”
Maribel looked away and threw herself back into the armchair.
I was trying to keep up, but I didn’t understand and no one was explaining anything. We were moving in with Nana. Dad was looking for a job. Mom was looking for a job, too. Neither of them could find one. Maribel blamed me for… something.
“We’re losing the house?” I finally blurted. “Where is it going?”
“Oh, Geez.” Maribel got up and stalked out.
We started packing the next weekend.
One by one, I took my teacups, delicate as eggshells, off the shelf above my desk. Stamped on the bottom of each was a quote—something wise or clever a First Lady had said or written. I read every word as I rolled the cups in bubble wrap, but nothing the First Ladies had to tell me was very much help.
I emptied my closet and swept all the barrettes and hair elastics out of my bathroom drawer. I went to the garage where I had stored some summer-blooming flower bulbs—dahlias and ranunculus and begonias. I didn’t know where I would ever plant them. Or when. But, just in case, I wrapped them in dishtowels and packed them up, too.
Dad left his truck at the mechanic’s and drove Mom’s station wagon down to Los Angeles. It’s where he grew up, where his brothers, my tíos, still live, and where he thinks we have a better chance of starting over.
Now whenever Mom needs a car, she takes my sister’s. If
I were Maribel, I guess I’d want to win that silvery-purple convertible, too.
CHAPTER FOUR
Happiness is not where you think you find it.… So many people poison every day worrying about the next.
—JACQUELINE KENNEDY
Mom would never have given me coffee. One of the reasons I used to like staying over at Nana’s house—before we were staying here permanently, I mean—is that she pretends she doesn’t hear when Mom says coffee will make me jittery or stunt my growth, and not to pour me any.
When I sit down at the kitchen table, Nana fills my mug, half with coffee and half with cream, then sprinkles cinnamon and sugar on top. She brings me a bowl of oatmeal and half a concha, my favorite kind of pan dulce, from the Mexican bakery around the corner. She walks there every morning, even when it’s raining, and is back at the house before the rest of us even wake up.
I eat the oatmeal first, leaving a pile of raisins behind in the bowl (because Nana also pretends not to hear when I tell her that raisins are awful, so wrinkled and chewy). Then I break off a piece of concha, letting the crumbly topping fall over my fingers, and dip it in the coffee. It soaks it up like a sponge. The perfect mix of bitter and sweet.
Nana glances nervously at the clock on the microwave when Maribel’s blow-dryer roars to life in the bathroom. But I’m not worried. Maribel is never late.
“Do you have everything you need, mija?”
“Think so.”
I have my backpack from last year, the school supplies laid out on the nightstand, and of course, my new shoes. I look down. There isn’t anything wrong with them, really. They’re clean and new, bright and white. But so plain.
I have an idea.
“Actually, Nana, maybe there’s one more thing I need. Can I use some of your wrapping stuff?”
She starts to open her mouth as if she’s about to ask why, but changes her mind. “Ándale,” she says. “But you better hurry. You don’t want to be late on your first day.”
Nana always opens her presents slowly and cautiously, painfully careful not to rip or tear the wrapping. It doesn’t matter how much we tease or complain; she never rushes. And all the paper, all the ribbon, all the bows and bags she thinks are too nice to just throw away she keeps on a shelf at the top of the hallway closet.
Maybe some of it is useful after all. I drag a chair over from the kitchen and climb up to try to find what I need.
Under a square of silver wrapping that I recognize from Nana’s birthday last year, I find a long piece of ribbon the color of marigolds. It’s frayed at the ends, but only a little.
I hop off the chair and hurry to the bedroom, where I snip the ribbon in half with a pair of scissors. Each piece is just long enough to weave over my shoelaces and tie in a neat bow. I wish I had time to check the whole outfit in a mirror, but the shoes feel better, at least, with a little more color.
“Geez, you’re going to make us late!” Maribel calls.
I grab my backpack from off the floor, hold it open against my nightstand, and rake in pens and pencils and erasers. “Coming!”
Maribel is waiting for me at the door, holding the keys to Grandpa’s car in one hand and in the other, a pig-shaped gingerbread cookie with its ear bitten off. Her hair is braided and coiled up in a bun. Her mouth looks as if she’s just finished a grape lollipop.
“New item of the month?”
She smacks her lips. “Sugar Plum,” she says. “Let’s go.”
We lean down for Nana to kiss our foreheads on our way out the door. Outside, Logan is sitting on his front porch steps, poking at a spiderweb with a twig. He drops it and stands when he sees us.
“I heard your mom drive off earlier, so I knew she wasn’t giving you a ride. I waited—just in case you want to walk together after all?”
“That’s okay. Maribel’s giving me a ride.”
She elbows me in the ribs. “Geez!”
“Ouch! Okay.” I turn to Logan. “Sorry. Do you want to come with us?”
“Plenty of room,” Maribel adds, patting the side of the Crown Victoria. “This thing is basically a tank.”
Logan picks up his backpack and scrambles down the steps. Maribel unlocks the doors. I sit up front with her, and Logan climbs in back.
It’s not that I don’t like him. Logan is pretty much family. I mean, even before we moved in with Nana, I saw him more often than any of my actual cousins, and I can’t even remember a time when I didn’t know him. Mom’s photo albums are filled with pictures of Logan and me dressed as Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf for Halloween, of us diving for candy when the piñata broke at my birthday parties, and of bright blue raspado syrup dripping off our chins and staining our shirts when it was summertime.
I even sort of miss him, which is a strange thing to feel, I mean, considering we’ve been living next door to each other for months now. But that’s the problem. I never told anyone at school what happened with the house last year. But it’s not like I can hide it from Logan. Every time I see him I hold my breath and clench my jaw and wonder when he’s finally going to ask why we’re living with Nana, or how long we’re going to stay, or when my dad is coming back.
The thing is, I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, and I don’t want to say so out loud. So whenever Logan came to the door this summer, I told him I was busy. And every time I heard his basketball bouncing on the driveway, I just stayed inside.
But on the way to school, Logan doesn’t ask why we’re living at Nana’s, or where Dad is, or even why we’re riding with Maribel in Grandpa’s enormous Crown Victoria and not with Mom.
Instead, he leans forward and asks, “You haven’t seen Magdalena, have you?”
“Oh, no.” I twist around to face him, the seat belt straining against my neck. “She didn’t get out again, did she?”
He brushes his hair out of his eyes. “She got out again.”
Magdalena is completely harmless—unless you’re a guppy, obviously. She’s even sort of beautiful in a way, deep forest green with yellow stripes.
Nana doesn’t think so.
“Well, you better find her fast. You remember what happened last time, don’t you?”
Logan shudders.
He had invited me over to watch Magdalena eat her lunch one Sunday last year. Only, when we got to his bedroom, she wasn’t in her aquarium. His mom said he must have left the lid open, but he swore he closed it. We emptied Logan’s drawers and tore through his closet trying to find her. We checked in all his shoes and even turned all his pockets inside out, but Magdalena had completely disappeared.
Logan had dropped a guppy in her bowl. “Maybe she’ll come back when she’s hungry.” We went to go shoot free throws in his driveway.
Logan had made twelve shots in a row. He was going for number thirteen when we heard a shriek from Nana’s yard. The ball dropped. We ran over—Logan’s mom three steps behind us—to see what had happened.
I had never seen Nana so upset. She was screaming—she was even cursing—but none of us could understand what was wrong. Finally, Ms. Johnson took her by both wrists and got her to calm down enough to explain. Sort of.
Nana pointed at Logan, then to one of her toilet planters. “Get it out of there,” she growled.
“Get what? Wh-where?” Logan stammered. He looked from Nana to his mom, to the planter, and back to Nana again. And then the color drained from his cheeks. He finally understood. “Oh.”
He bit his lower lip, walked over to the toilet, and crouched down for a closer look. Gently, he pushed aside stems and leaves and flowers. “There you are.”
I shake my fist like Nana had that afternoon. “If I ever, ever, find that thing in my garden again, I’ll bring her back home myself,” I roar.
“In pieces!” Logan and Maribel shout together.
We had all laughed until we cried that day. Even Nana, after the surprise finally wore off.
We’re all laughing again as Maribel pulls over to let us out of the car half
a block away from school. “This close enough for you guys?”
“It’s fine.” Logan and I click open our seat belts in unison.
I unlock my door, but Maribel puts a hand on my shoulder before I can open it. “Hey.”
I turn to face her. “Yeah?”
“Have a good day and all that,” she says. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I say. I push the door open and step outside.
“Thanks for the ride,” Logan says as she drives away.
“Thanks for waiting.” I really mean it. I’m glad he’s here. Because as long as I was laughing with Logan, I could stop thinking about my too-short jeans or my plain shoes or how different everything is from the way the first day of sixth grade was supposed to be.
CHAPTER FIVE
You just don’t luck into things as much as you’d like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it’s friendships or opportunities.
—BARBARA BUSH
Ms. Ramos got married over the summer. She’s Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey now, and she starts class by passing around postcards from her honeymoon in Spain: A dreamy cathedral that looks like the drip castles I used to make with seawater and sand at the beach. A flamenco dancer with a rose behind her ear and a whorl of red ruffles around her feet. A green reflecting pool, surrounded by myrtle trees.
As we pass the postcards from desk to desk, Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey hands out sheets of blank white paper and asks us to write and illustrate postcards from our own summers. “Think of this as a chance to catch up with one another and to warm up those descriptive writing skills. We’ll go around and share when you’re finished.”
Great.
I blink at the empty sheet of paper in front of me. I try to avoid talking in class to begin with, and the idea of talking about the past few months makes me want to crawl underneath my desk and hide.
The Fresh New Face of Griselda Page 3