The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  I had to admit, part of me wanted to give up all of my responsibilities and sit on the couch smoking weed and eating potato chips all day like Rodrigo, too. Well, not smoking pot, because I didn’t do drugs, but eating chocolate-chip cookies while watching old black-and-white movies all day didn’t sound so bad. I like black-and-white movies, especially the love stories.

  Of course, whenever I thought like this, the words of my father would ring through my ears. “Mija, do not stoop to that level.”

  Then, a moment later another voice rang out.

  “Sonia…ayúdame.”

  I paused before responding. Silence hung in the air as both Tía Luna and Rodrigo waited for me to get up and see what my mother wanted. I rolled my eyes. Now what, I thought. I just got home.

  “Oye, Sonia, ayuda a tu ama…” Rodrigo ordered me to go help our mother before she called out again. “Y tengo hambre. Cuándo comemos?” he added with an attitude of “Can you hurry up and get dinner on the table too?”

  I scowled at mi hermano. Tía Luna, seeing my look of anger shook her head with so much disapproval that the fat on her neck started to jiggle like a holiday turkey before it goes to the chopping block.

  “I pray the devil doesn’t burn you too long, Sonia,” Tía Luna said, as if she were being compassionate. “But once he has you in his flames, he’ll show no mercy.”

  I rolled my eyes, put down the cheapie paper towels, and headed for the bedroom. Even inside my own house, I was always the outsider.

  “Tía, te gusta Speedy Gonzalez?” my brother asked, inquiring if my aunt liked the mouse in the cartoon he was watching.

  “I don’t know, mijo,” answered my aunt as she reached for the last remaining cookie in the bag. “Does he reject Satan?”

  It turned out that all mi ama wanted from me was to read a simple 30 DAY NOTICE OF RENTAL PRICE INCREASE from the white man who owned our house. However, when she asked me to do this, I wanted to EXPLODE!

  It wasn’t reading the letter that bothered me. It was only going to take me dos minutos to do that and explain to her that our rent was being increased by four percent, due at the beginning of next month. (I only wished all my chores took this long.) What made me so angry was the fact that mi ama had been in this country for almost sixteen years and still knew practically no English. Mi papi, ever since the day he got here, had worked two or three jobs and still had made the time to learn enough of the language so that he could at least hold some kind of conversation with a gabacho, but mi ama, with all her free time, still knew almost nothing.

  Of course, if telenovelas were in English, she’d have spoken like William Shakespeare.

  I looked at the piece of paper and burned on the inside. A minute later, Tía Luna walked in the bedroom and informed us that she’d be staying for dinner. No, she didn’t ask, she’d just simply invited herself. And since my fat aunt always ate the equivalent of three Jesus Christs and all of the apostles combined, there wouldn’t be enough food for the evening meal unless someone went to the market.

  That someone would, of course, be me.

  Mi ama crumpled up the letter from the landlord. After all, it was only the first notice. Then she turned to tell me what to buy for dinner. It seemed I’d be cooking tortilla soup and arroz con polio. That’s when I snapped.

  “Sonia, cuando vayas al mercado, no te olvides truer…”

  “No!” I said, before she finished her sentence.

  Mi ama and Tía Luna froze.

  “Como?” asked mi ama.

  There was a long pause. I didn’t answer. After another moment, she began again.

  “Escúchame, Sonia. Cuando vayas al mercado, compras…”

  “I said, No,” I replied in English. “I have homework.” I knew that answering in ingles would only make her more upset, but I also knew that she understood every single damn word I was saying.

  “Let someone else do something for a change,” I continued. “You only take advantage of me because I’m a girl.”

  With that I headed for the door.

  “Ay, Dios mío,” Tía Luna said in Spanish. “Satan prevents her from knowing the sacrifices you’ve made for her. I’ll pray for her, Maria, but I fear your daughter is going to be boiled in the oils of hell and served like papas fritas to the devil with a hamburguesa.”

  I stopped, turned, and glared at Tía Luna. “Is that before or after I clean up the sticky stuff off the counters Rodrigo spilled in the kitchen?”

  Tía Luna gasped in horror.

  “¡Al Diablo!” she said, recoiling back.

  I slammed the door behind me, plopped myself down at the dining room table, and turned on my study light.

  No, it wasn’t the devil that made me do what I did. It was the tortuguita, and at that moment I swore to myself that even if it took me a thousand years, I would never turn into my mother. Never! The United States was all about opportunity, and I wasn’t going to let anyone steal mine. Especially not mi familia.

  Cross my heart and hope to die.

  That night we ate El Pollo Loco for dinner. In total silence.

  chapter diez

  I focused on school. Of course, I still did my chores around mi casa, but not at the expense of my homework and classes. For the next two weeks we ate more takeout than ever before. McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, everything. We even ate Taco Bell, the most unMexican Mexican food there is.

  A week later I also told Tee-Ay that she was being cut off from any more of my homework. I told her she needed to learn math for herself, and I shut her down cold turkey just like a mujer shuts off the love machine from un hombre who gets caught with una Sancha.

  At first I could tell Tee-Ay didn’t think I was serious, but soon she learned. I didn’t give her any more assignments for the entire year. ¡Nada!

  Okay, sí, I felt guilty that I wasn’t cooking and cleaning every night, like Cinderella Rodriguez, but my grades were getting better, and that’s what really mattered. Plus, I knew that my diploma was the only real way for me to get out and live a good life in America, and I was so determined to earn one that I even made the decision of no more Frijolito. While I was going to miss the kitten, I couldn’t risk having the stupid rude boy distract me from my goals. He’d really fuzzed up my brain for a few days, and I didn’t have time for that anymore. Classes were most important, then chores around the house to help mi ama. After all, she was pregnant with twins and I couldn’t just turn into my loser brother Rodrigo all of a sudden. That wouldn’t have been right. But boys were absolutamente out of the picture for me.

  I walked home from school on the last day of the first quarter with my report card saying I had earned a 3.23 GPA. For the first time in a long while I felt proud of myself. I had won a family battle.

  Pero, as I soon learned, just because I had won a battle didn’t mean I had won the war.

  It started with the mattress on the floor. Living with so many brothers, I’d just thought they had tossed everything on the floor in the bedroom because they were playing battle combat or something. You know how stupid boys can be. Then I heard a burp.

  Two seconds later, the foul, nasty stink of booze-breath floated through the air. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.

  “Estoy aquí,” said my drunkle, his voice low and serious. I spinned around and saw that he had a cut over his right eye, a gash that looked a few days old, with dried blood crusted over it.

  “Haz la cama,” he told me, instructing me to fix up the bed. Obviously, he’d be staying. For how long, I did not know.

  I began to do what he said. He watched from the doorway.

  As I made up the room, I realized it wasn’t too hard to figure out that my drunkle was flat broke, had done something really bad, and was most likely a wanted man. By who, I did not know, but the tone in his voice made it clear he’d be here for a while. Indefinitely, perhaps.

  And how could we say no? After all, somos familia. We’re family.

  I tossed a clean sheet over th
e mattress. My drunkle had decided to take Rodrigo’s bed, which meant Rodrigo would take Oscar’s bed, and Oscar would take Miguel’s bed. Miguel would end up sleeping on the floor because he had no one younger than him to boot from bed except Hernando, but since Hernando was only two years old and still sleeping in a crib, Miguel would be on the ground. The youngest always got screwed when it came to stuff like this.

  I reached over to tuck in the sheets at the far corner.

  “It’ll be good for you to have a man around, with your father away so much,” my drunkle said as I bent over to fix the sheets. “A man that can watch over you as you develop and mature.”

  A cold chill swept over my body, and the hair on my neck began to rise. I didn’t dare turn around, but I could feel my drunkle’s red, bloodshot eyes watching me, staring at me, looking me over, up and down, side to side.

  “Dime, cuántos años tienes?” my drunkle asked, wanting me to remind him how old I was. I paused.

  I tucked in the last corner of the bedsheet, not quite knowing what to do. Then I stood and turned to face him. Though he was family, my stomach fluttered with fear.

  I opened my mouth. My throat felt swollen. No words came out of my lips.

  My drunkle looked me in the eye. Then he squinted and gazed down at my breasts.

  “Sonia …” a voice suddenly called. “Ayúdame.”

  We both looked up.

  It was the first time in my life I had ever been glad to hear those words. I lowered my head and took a step forward to exit the bedroom and go help mi ama. My drunkle, however, blocked the doorway.

  He didn’t move.

  I waited.

  He still didn’t move.

  I waited some more.

  “Con permiso, Tío,” I finally said.

  He looked at me long and hard. I remained staring at the floor.

  “Sonia .. .” mi ama called again. Another moment passed. Finally, my drunkle stepped aside.

  “Ve …” he said, granting me permission to leave. But he didn’t clear from the doorway. Instead he turned to the side, making it so that I had to squeeze past him to get out. “Vase.”

  I paused. There was no way for me to exit other than to try and slide past him. I turned sideways. My breasts rubbed against him. For a moment I was entirely pressed against his body. He stunk of body odor. Two seconds later I was out in the hall, and a few steps after that, inside mi ama’s bedroom.

  “Qué te pasa?” she asked in an annoyed voice when I walked in, wondering what had taken me so long. I didn’t answer.

  “Dígame,” she said, sensing that something wasn’t quite right. I must have been white as a gabacho from Wisconsin. She reached for the remote control and lowered the volume on the television set.

  “Qué te pasa?” she asked again.

  “Nada,” I replied in a barely audible voice. Then my drunkle appeared.

  “Necesitamos otro papel para el baño, María. Este papel está muy escamoso. For qué siempre tienes que comprar el más cbafa?”

  My mother raised her eyes and stared at her brother, wondering where he had come from so quickly to complain about the cheap toilet paper she always purchased. But there was only one place he could have come from, in the other bedroom with me. I watched as mi ama tried to put two and two together.

  Yet some people are no good at math. Or maybe it’s just that they don’t really try.

  “Sí, voy a comprar otro,” Ama answered, explaining to her brother that she’d buy new toilet paper the next day.

  “Y jabón,” my drunkle added. “The lavender kind. I like lavender soap.”

  His order for bathroom supplies given, my drunkle scratched his stomach and walked away.

  I raised my eyes and looked at mi ama. She looked back as if she were studying me. For a moment we did not speak.

  But we did. A million words passed between us. However, they were the kind of words that move from one person to the other in total silence. They were words mi ama did not, or chose not, to acknowledge. She didn’t want to see what she just saw, so instead she looked down and reached into her bra.

  “Aquí está el dinero para el mercado. Escucha, Sonia, necesitamos …”

  Yes, I could have said something, but at the time I thought it would have been pointless. And probably, mi ama wouldn’t have believed me anyway, thinking it was just some sort of “thing” I had made up so I wouldn’t have to do more work around the house, or something like that. She knew I had never liked her brother. Talking to her would have been stupid.

  But talking to mi papi would be smart. After all, he was the true man of this house, even if he wasn’t around very much because he worked all the time. I stayed up until 12:45 that night, waiting for him to come home. When I heard his key in the lock, I rushed to the door and almost tackled him.

  “Qué te pasa, mija?” my father asked in great surprise as I squeezed him as hard as I could before he had even finished entering.

  I had planned to tell mi papi the truth. Everything. But then, while I was squeezing him and feeling the cold zipper of his jacket pressing up against my cheek, it occurred to me that while mi papi was a calm, reasonable man on the surface, deep down he was a person with great pride, and if he found out what I was about to tell him, regarding my drunkle, he would have killed him. Literally, he would have killed him. Mi papi would have murdered my drunkle right on the spot and would not have cared one bit about the consequences. Of course, that would mean he’d go to jail for the rest of his life.

  And where would that leave the rest of the familia? Who would support us? Rodrigo? I doubted it. My younger brothers? They weren’t even old enough to deliver newspapers. Me? I didn’t stand a chance.

  Plus, mi ama still had two more babies yet to come.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized what the consequences of my words would be. Losing mi papi would devastate the entire family. Murder. Jail. Scandal. Homelessness. Poverty. Our lives would fall down like dominoes.

  And then I realized that my drunkle hadn’t really done anything. And I could avoid him. I could stay on this side of the house when he was on that side and I could make sure that the bathroom door was always locked and that we were never alone in the same room together.

  There were a million things I could do, a million things that could prevent our familia from losing Papi forever.

  I couldn’t handle losing mi papi forever. He was the best person in the whole world and I didn’t want him to go to jail because of me. I squeezed him even tighter as tears streamed down my face.

  “Mija, dime qué pasa?” he asked again, growing more concerned.

  “I just missed you, Papi,” I said in Spanish. “I missed you so much. Promise me we’re not going to lose you, Papi. Tell me we’re not going to lose you,” I said as more tears continued to flow.

  He smiled with a warmth that filled my heart like a hot bowl of tortilla soup on a cold winter night. “You’re not going to lose me, mija. You’re not going to lose me at all.” He hugged me close. “Besides, what would I ever do without my little tortuguita?” he added with a grin.

  I squeezed mi papi again and thanked God in heaven above that he allowed me the honor of being my father’s daughter. And just like that I felt good about my decision. If I had said something, everyone would lose. But if I kept quiet and followed my plan, things would work out. I would work things out. I would work things out for the good of the familia. All I had to do was be smart. Things always worked themselves out for the tortuguitas. Just read the fairy tales. The tortuguitas always win.

  My tears began to dry up.

  “Mija,” my father asked, seeing that I was calming down. “Qué piensas sobre un champurrado?” A smile filled my face. Though it was a school night, it would be a wonderful treat to stay up even later and make my father a cup of delicious hot chocolate, Mexican style. Besides, I made the best champurrado in Los Angeles, going step by step from scratch just like they did in the old country. I rushed to t
he kitchen with excitement. Mi papi followed right behind.

  First I combined the leche and the water while mixing in masa y harina flour until everything was smooth. Then I added in a touch of sugar and a dash of salt as I brought the liquid to a boil. Once boiling, I lowered the heat and stirred, melting in the delicious bricks of chocolate at a slow, even pace. But I didn’t just melt the bricks into the champurrado. I talked to the chocolate. In my opinion, that was the key to getting all of the real flavor out of them. You had to whisper to them. Speak to them. Tell them kind words and make them feel as if they were being gently treated, like a little baby who was just about to fall asleep in your arms after a warm bath. Then, after everything was blended perfectly together and the liquid was piping hot, I spooned out a cup of delicious cbampurrado for mi papi. And one for me too. (Of course I had to have one.) Then, as I topped off mi papi’s cup with a spoonful of extra froth, I realized I hadn’t just made a wonderful cup of cbampurrado for mi papi, I had made a cup of love.

  “Te gusta, Papi?” I asked with hope in my voice after he took his first sip.

  “Mmm,” he said with a nod of his head. “Mmm.”

  Mi papi wasn’t a talkative man, but his “Mmm” said it all. It was like he was saying that working seventeen hours a day was worth every bit of effort, energy, and sweat, because at the end of his day he was a man who got to come home and enjoy a cup of hot champurrado with his little tortuguita.

  We sat there for a long time as I chatted with mi papi about my hopes and dreams once I graduated from high school. I told him all about the ways I’d help the family, about the ways I’d be a role model to my younger brothers and the new twins. About the ways I would one day make him very proud.

  “Mija,” he said as if he were informing me of the most obvious fact in the world, “I’m already very proud.” Then he drank the last sip of his cham-purrado and smiled with deep satisfaction. It wasn’t until after 1:30 in the morning when we finally went to bed.