Then I squinched my eyes and shot him back a hard look that said, “Dream on, Príncipe Charming.”
As much as I liked fairy tales, I hated them too. Especially the one about Prince Charming, the guy who comes in and saves the day, and he and the princess fall madly in love and live happily ever after. That sounds nice, but Principe Charming’s a myth, total BS. Especially when it comes to Latino men. Latino men suffer from too much machismo. They think they’re tough. They think they’re cool. They think they’re entitled to order a woman around just because we have a vagina. La verdad es they’re just a bunch of mama’s boys. Mama’s boys who play with their penises.
Of course, I know a lot of girls my age dream about boyfriends and husbands and marriages and big wedding fiestas, but I think it’s better not to have your heart broken, your dreams crushed, and your cherry plucked before you’re even old enough to drive a car, so I do my best to stay away from them. Basically, boys are trouble. And Latino boys are the worst kind.
You know, I really wish someone would explain to me why Latino men have no problem providing the baby batter, but when it comes to everything else, so many young girls get nada más? No love. No support. Not even a diaper for the kids to poop in. I mean, how come they don’t teach that fairy tale in elementary school, the one about the abandoned, pregnant, teenage, Hispanic welfare mom who works part-time for minimum wage, cleaning office buildings at night?
No, Príncipe Charming doesn’t exist.
Okay, so I sound like an old maid when I say this. Plus, I like cats, which for sure means that I am going to spend the rest of my life alone. But I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have too few people in my life. After all, my house is so filled with people, I’ve even learned to poop quietly, like a mouse. But at least I know one day I won’t be dependent on a man to pay my bills and give me money so that if I wanted to go buy a new cordless telephone I’d have to ask permission. That’s why an education isn’t just about a dumb piece of paper to me. It’s also about freedom and power. An education means I won’t have to be any macho man’s two-breasted slave. One day when I have a diploma, I will tell a man, “Wash your own dishes. And make sure you use hot water.” Boys never use hot water when they wash the dishes.
Of course, machistas hate this idea. That’s because they want their women weak. It’s like it’s been bred into them from birth, a tradition from the old country or something. The men go off and do what they want, not telling their wives where they are going or when they are coming home or who they are going with, while the women stay home and cook and clean and feed the kids and worry. But I am part of a new generation of Latina women, a generation that isn’t going to stand for the mierda anymore, and I don’t care if we leave all the macho men in the dust.
¡Cabrones!
I turned to the pet-store boy, who was smiling at me, with a burn in my eye. And I handed him back Frijolito.
Rude, I thought, and walked out.
Okay, I admit, the boy was cute. But the cute ones are always the most dangerous.
Fifteen minutes later, I bought my drunkle a six-pack of cerveza and headed back to la casa.
And no, they didn’t check for ID.
chapter seis
When I showed up to my house, ¡sorpresa! my drunkle was gone. And I bet a bunch of my mom’s green twenty dollar bills were gone, too. I should have figured. It was like the phrase pedazo de mierda was invented just for him.
However, for all his piece-of-crapness, I had to admit my drunkle wasn’t an idiot. After all, it takes a lot of smarts to continue to con your familia out of a place to stay, eat, sleep, and shower for most of your life without ever having had a real job.
Maybe mi papi was the dumb one. Not only did he work like a dog, the money he brought home to his wife always got slipped to my drunkle so that he could have a little spending cash. Of course, what he spent it on was tequila, card games, cigarillos, and putas. While my dad sweated like a pig, cleaning the towels of white people at a fancy sports gym, my drunkle drank, gambled, smoked, and whored away my father’s dinero.
But hey, es familia, right?
I turned on the stove and got ready to prepare dinner. As usual, it took me until almost eleven to get everything finished around la casa before I could finally sit back down at the dining room table and begin my homework. I took a breath to clear my head and switched on my most favorite object in the whole world: my study light.
Though it was old, ugly, beat-up, and had only cost three dollars at a garage sale when the Villalobos family was evicted from their house—to me it had charm. The only problem was when I used it the drapes in our front room were so cheap people could easily see into our house from the outside. That’s why I made sure never to pick my nose when studying. Or at least I picked it when my back was turned to the front window. After all, girls get boogers too.
At 12:28 a.m. I switched off my study lamp. Finalmente. Even though it meant I’d be getting less than five hours of sleep, I had cracked the last biology problem, finished my reflective paragraph for English class, and had done the ten end-of-chapter-questions for World History. Despite what people think about our “underperforming” school, our teachers assigned a lot of homework.
“Muy bien, tortuguita,” I told myself when I finally crawled under my sheets. I felt like I’d been run over by a locomotive—a locomotive that would probably hit me again tomorrow—but I knew one day my efforts would pay off. They had to. After all, that’s how the story always ends for tortuguitas.
I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
chapter siete
The next day, just before the first-period bell rang, Tee-Ay approached. “Yo, let me see your math stuff.”
Of course I know that copying homework is what friends let other friends do in high school, but I had stayed up really late doing all my work, while I knew for a fact that Tee-Ay had been over at Constancy’s house watching a movie.
She held out her hand.
“Come on, let’s have it. The bell’s gonna ring.”
I looked at my backpack. Letting Tee-Ay get a zero on her assignment would be good for her. She’d been slipping lately anyway. Maybe it would wake her up.
She waved hi to a guy across the hall named Rickee.
“Hurry up, Sonia,” she said. “I told ya, the bell’s gonna ring.”
I opened my mouth to say something about how she needed to do her own work. I opened my mouth to say something about how she needed to learn this stuff for herself. I opened my mouth to say something about how she needed to start working to her full potential, quit being so self-absorbed, and stop spending so much time with Constancy, because that girl’s whole life was headed for trouble and Tee-Ay was going to be dragged right down with her if she didn’t wake up and smell the cafe con leche.
I opened my mouth to say a whole lot of things. Tee-Ay didn’t need my math homework. Tee-Ay needed someone to tell her to get her head out of her butt.
But just because I opened my mouth doesn’t mean any words came out. I stood there for a moment like a person waiting for someone to pop a grape between their lips that never comes. After a moment of looking like a complete openmouthed dork-asaurus, I lowered my eyes, reached into my backpack, and passed Tee-Ay my math work.
“Finally,” she said. “You move like some sort of turtle.”
That afternoon I walked home feeling like a loser. Plus, I had a giant migraine. All I wanted to do was take a nap.
“Sonia…” cried my mother as soon as I entered through the front door. “¡Ayúdame!”
There was no, “How was your day?” There was no, “How are your classes?” There was no, “Did you let your best friend cheat off your math homework despite the fact that you wanted to tell her she’s been acting like a real jerk lately?”
No, there was none of that. All I got was, “¡Sonia…ayúdame!” Couldn’t I even have a chance to pee?
Before I knew it, I’d been sent back to the mercado wi
th strict instructions to buy things like cheapie paper napkins, the kind that always fall apart in your hands and never get your fingers clean, no matter how hard you try to scrub them. But since they cost less, this is what I was told to get.
As I walked to the store I promised myself that one day, when I graduated from school and got a high-quality job, I would buy good paper napkins, the kind that really get your fingers clean. To me, nothing in the world could be worse than living your whole life using only cheapie paper napkins.
Suddenly I wanted to cry. How pathetic, I thought. I had turned into a wuss whose big dream in life was to buy good paper napkins. Could anything be more sad?
I made a left at the corner to go do the only thing I could think of that would make me feel better. Lucky for me, the stupid rude boy was nowhere in sight.
An old man asked if he could be of help. I pointed to the little brown kitten with the lump in its tummy. I think the old man could tell that I didn’t have any money to buy the kitten, but still he let me hold it. And he did it with a smile. People who work in pet stores are always so nice. Not like liquor stores, where people are mean even when you are actually going to pay for something.
Frijolito started to purr. I knew he understood me. The old man told me to take my time and went to feed some birds. I stroked the top of Frijolito’s head. Two minutes of sheer, blissful silence passed.
“I knew you’d be back,” said a voice, breaking the sheer, blissful silence.
“You didn’t know,” I snapped in return.
“I did,” he said. “It’s been written in the stars.”
I tried to think of something clever to say that would shut him up.
“I wouldn’t know about the stars,” I responded. “Around here, there’s too much smog to see the sky.”
That should get him to leave me alone, I thought.
“That’s because you need to look with heart and not your eyes,” he answered with a smile.
Damn! I thought. He out-clevered me. But did Principe Charming really expect a cheesy line like that to work?
A moment passed. I didn’t speak and neither did he. During the quiet I could feel him standing behind me, but I refused to turn around. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking I was interested.
Because I wasn’t.
Finally I couldn’t take it any longer, so I spun around and handed Frijolito back to the stupid rude boy. It was time to go.
“I greatly look forward to seeing you again,” he said as I headed for the exit.
“Who’s to say I’ll be back?” I answered with a snippy attitude.
“Oh, you will,” he replied. “It’s been written.”
He smiled again, and I noticed his eyes were green, like emeralds swimming in pools of clear water.
“You need to go back to astronomy class,” I said without smiling back at him. “Your stars are wack.”
The bell on the pet store door jingled as I left. It was cold outside. I buttoned my coat and crossed the street.
A few minutes later I found myself inside the supermercado with detergent, tortillas, and paper towels in my shopping cart. Of course, every product I purchased was the cheapie kind, but I wasn’t sure how they had gotten into my cart since I didn’t remember shopping for them. My mind was a million miles away. No matter what I did, the stupid rude boy with eyes the color of emeralds wouldn’t get out of my head.
chapter ocho
Three days later, as the water on the stove began to boil for the beans I was about to cook, I finally realized what the problem with the stupid rude boy was. He was too good looking. After all, if there is one type of boy that can’t be trusted—not that any of them can be, but if there’s one kind in particular—it’s the good-looking kind. An ugly boy with a carved-up face and a nose where his ear should be, that kind of boy you might be able to trust. But a cute one? No way.
I told myself that no matter how much I adored Frijolito, I would not go back to the pet store. Only bad things could come of it. La escuela needed to be my focus, not muchacbos.
“I knew you’d return,” he said.
“I’m here for the kitten,” I answered.
“I believe you,” he said, completely not believing me. Cute boys like him are always so arrogant.
Without saying another word, he passed me Frijolito. We spent a moment in silence. Me and the cat, that is. I tried to put the stupid rude boy out of my brain even though he was standing right beside me, staring as if he were all googly-ga-ga in love or something. Finally he broke the silence.
“I have looked forward to seeing you more than a flower looks forward to the rain.”
Why couldn’t the stupid rude boy have eyes the color of puke? No one ever got seduced by eyes the color of puke.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
“No,” I answered. I knew I shouldn’t have come.
“No is a very strange name, especially for such a beautiful girl,” he responded. “Tell me, do you have a brother named Yes?”
He was making fun of me. I refused to answer.
“A sister named Up? A cousin named Down?” he continued. “Maybe you have an auntie named Maybe?” he added, smiling at me with his perfect, white teeth. “So No, is there a Yes or a Maybe in your family?”
“My name is not No,” I finally shot back. And then once I’d said it, I felt like I had to say something else.
“My name is Sonia,” I added, having lost the battle to withhold my name from him.
Of course that meant the next thing he would probably do was tell me his name. That’s how the trouble always started.
“Me llamo Geraldo,” the boy said, introducing himself with a small, gracious bow of his head. “Mucho gusto.”
The Spanish rolled sweetly off his tongue as if he had been born of noble birth. However, it wasn’t Mexican Spanish he was speaking. I could tell instantly by his accent Geraldo was Salvadoran.
“Dine with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Lunch?”
“No.”
“Breakfast?”
“I must go.”
“A light snack?”
“Here,” I said, passing Frijolito back to him. “I have to leave.”
“Coffee? Tea? A Snickers bar with a cup of vegetable soup.”
A Snickers bar with a cup of vegetable soup? I couldn’t help but smile.
“You are radiant,” he said when he saw the grin on my face. “I see galaxies in your beauty.”
Galaxies in my beauty? I wondered how many times Principe Charming had used that line before.
“I have to go,” I said, heading for the exit. The little bells on the door jingled as it closed behind me.
When I stepped out onto the sidewalk, a chill of brisk air hit my face. Outside it was turning to winter, but I wasn’t cold.
Probably because the stupid rude boy was so HOT!
Geraldo! Geraldo! Geraldo!
I floated home with my head spinning. After all, there were galaxies in my beauty.
chapter nueve
“Ay, finalmente,” came a voice in rapid-fire Spanish before my key was even out of the lock. “Your poor mother is stuck in bed and needs a thousand things, and you take forever to make a simple trip to el mercado. Such disrespect is the devil’s work.”
It was my aunt, Tía Luna, my mom’s superfat, super religious sister. Jesus hung on her wall. Jesus hung on her neck. Jesus filled up every area of my aunt’s life except her mouth. That was reserved for threats of the devil. And cupcakes.
“Just look at this house. It’s as filthy as el diablo’s playpen,” she snapped at me.
Despite the fact that she was pointing at me with an index finger so plump it looked like a wiener popping out of a hot dog bun, I had to admit Tia Luna was right. There was a giant mess. Across the coffee table were potato chip crumbs, two cherry soda cans, and a half-eaten bag of imitation Oreo cookies, the cheapie kind that pretended they were the same as real Oreo
cookies but tasted fakely different.
Tía Luna leaned forward, grabbed three black-and-white cheapie cookie sandwiches, and started plopping them into her mouth.
“You need to learn the ways of the old country,” she said as she gobbled down the round little treats. “Or the devil is going to roast your soul in the fires of eternal damnation.”
“You tell her, Tía,” chirped in Rodrigo as he reclined on the couch, watching Speedy Gonzales cartoons. “The devil’s gonna get her.”
While I always had about ten thousand chores to get done, my older brother, Rodrigo, pretty much went through life as a lazy, do-nothing, sit-on-the-sofa-and-play-video-games loser. He had failed every class he’d ever taken since seventh grade (including PE), dropped out of high school after ninth grade, and aside from an occasional part-time job from which he’d get fired within two weeks of being hired, he pretty much spent his life reinforcing negative stereotypes about Mexicans being lazy, uneducated, good-for-nothing, brown-skinned troublemakers.
Not that he and I didn’t get along or anything.
“Don’t you give him the devil’s eye,” Tía Luna said to me with black cookie-crumb dust covering her teeth. “Rodrigo’s a good boy, but el diablo’s schemes hold men like him back in this country,” she said, crossing herself.
Funny, I thought it was all the mota Rodrigo smoked that held him back. One look at his red eyes, and all the munchies lying everywhere, should have told my aunt that Rodrigo was stoned out of his head. But of course it didn’t. In me, Tía Luna saw the devil. In Rodrigo, she saw a martyred saint.
And people wondered why I stopped going to church.
“Amen,” said Tía Luna after she crossed herself again and mumbled some prayers for Rodrigo. Then she grabbed three more cookies. Praying always inspired her appetite.
“Does Jesus got my back, Tía?” asked Rodrigo with red, glossy eyes.
“Jesus loves you, Rodrigo,” Tía Luna answered. “Jesus loves everyone. But the devil loves, too, and he especially loves the sinners,” my aunt said, looking at me with a menacing glare. “Give up your sinful ways, Sonia, before the fires of Satan melt your flesh like shredded cheese on top of an enchilada a la diabla.” Slowly she put another fake Oreo in her mouth. The cookie disappeared like a quarter being sucked into a sideways slot machine.
The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez Page 3