I buckled my seat belt and tried to get comfortable.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” asked the stewardess after the plane took off.
“A Diet Coke, por favor,” I said.
“And you, sir?” she asked my brother.
He answered without looking up. “Rum and coke, extra ice.”
The stewardess paused. “Do you have ID?”
“¿Qué?” Rodrigo said.
“ID,” she repeated. “You know, proof that you are of legal drinking age.”
My brother paused.
“Okay, just give me una cerveza,” said Rodrigo, in no mood to hear any back talk from her.
She paused. “Maybe you’d prefer a Diet Coke as well, sir?” she finally said.
“No, I’d prefer a beer,” said Rodrigo.
“I’m sorry, but no ID, no alcohol.”
“Puta,” said Rodrigo under his breath, loud enough for her to hear.
The stewardess stared at my brother for a minute, debating what to do. Oh no, I thought, is she going to kick him off the plane? Have him arrested for being disorderly? Make us both stay in Mexico for a few more days until we work things out with the authorities. A person could get into a lot of trouble for mouthing off to airline people these days, and I had school on Monday.
However, the stewardess did none of those things. Instead, she just smiled.
“Enjoy your flight, sir. And if I can offer you anything nonalcoholic to drink, please let me know. It’d be my pleasure.” The stewardess said it with such niceness that her message was crystal clear. In her eyes, Rodrigo was nothing more than a pathetic piece of crap, and she was not going to stoop to his level.
A few minutes later she handed me a Diet Coke. I reached into my wallet and gave her a two dollar tip.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a refreshing nonalcoholic drink, sir? It’s really quite delicious.” She was teasing him.
“Pfft,” said my brother. When she walked away, Rodrigo turned to me and asked, “Why you tippin’ her?”
I paused, then took a sip of my Diet Coke. “For good service,” I said. “After all, I don’t want to be a lame-o.”
I smiled. My brother grunted, lowered his baseball cap, and tried to sleep. After eight weeks in Mexico, Rodrigo was returning to the United States beaten up, broken down, and worn out. Me, I felt revitalized and refreshed, and as the plane zoomed skyward, I thought about how classes were starting again in a few days, and it was going to be my best year yet.
I had been wrong about Mexico. Totally wrong. And thank goodness.
What an amazing country.
chapter veintitrés
I’d never been more excited to kick butt in school in my entire life. I didn’t care what assignments were going to be thrown at me, what essay questions were going to be asked of me, or what stupid geometrical figures were going to be diagrammed for me in an attempt to make my brain spin, loop, bend, and twirl. History papers, chemistry problems, expository research assignments for English in MLA format…bring it on! I was so jazzed up that on the first day of junior year I went to the counselor’s office and changed my entire schedule.
To AP classes.
“You sure you can handle this kind of workload?” the counselor asked with a skeptical look. “Five advance placement classes and computer graphics is going to be a heck of a lot of work.”
I looked up with a glow in my eyes, a glow that had somehow come to me from Abuelita. “Bring it on,” I said. The counselor saw my fire, nodded his head, and began tapping at his keyboard. In eighteen seconds my entire class schedule was changed. I was ready for anything.
Except what actually came.
For the first few weeks I was home, my mom was a giant pain in the rear. I heard “Sonia .. . ayúdame,” more than I’d ever heard in the prior sixteen years of my life. And my drunkle had pretty much dug himself in like a smelly vagrant who was never going to leave. All he did was drink, lose money gambling on the card game Con Quian, and make a total mess of la casa, with the expectation that I’d not only clean up after him but cook him hot meals along the way.
There was a bit of good news, though. Papi got a promotion and was earning two more dollars an hour at the gym. I was so proud when I heard about his pay raise. I knew he had earned it. But mi papi’s promotion meant more responsibility, and sometimes he worked even later into the night. Though I was slammed with things to do like never before, I was also inspired by his example of how hard work always paid off. So I did everything I could to attend to my schoolwork, homework, housework, and all my other chores.
And for a while I was pulling it off. Then my mother was put on bed rest, doctor’s orders. Basically, the problem was she was too fat. I mean, it ain’t like Mexican food is the healthiest anyway, and mi ama seemed to love cheese nowadays more than a mouse. She was eating whole blocks of the stuff at a time. Her ankles were swollen like inflatable tubes.
“For the twins,” she would say in Spanish as she gobbled queso Chihuahua, a yellow cheese that was her favorite of them all. Between mi ama and Tía Luna, they were so fat, I thought it was only a matter of time before one of them sat and broke a chair.
Of course, mi ama had never been what I would call helpful when it came to making our home functional in the first place, but once she was ordered to do nothing but sit in her bed and watch telenovelas all day (oh, the tragedy), she became like a hospital patient. And I became the nurse. I even had to wash mi ama’s underarms in the bathtub because she couldn’t reach around her enormous tetas to get to her armpits.
Night after night I stayed up until one a.m., struggling to get all my homework done, and every morning my alarm clock would go off at 5:07, like some kind of cruel torture buzzer. For months I survived on four hours of sleep a night, and still, though I’d never worked harder to keep up, I barely pulled a C average for the first semester. Those AP classes were brutal and my duties around the house never ended, no matter how much I did. The positive vibes and momentum from my trip to Mexico were all but a dream when the new year came.
“Dang, where you been, girl?” Tee-Ay said to me one day when she saw me in the hall, second semester.
“I know,” I answered. “I’ve been missing a ton of school.” I lowered my eyes and looked at the ground in shame. There was no reason for me to even bother trying to explain what had been going on. Tee-Ay knew the reason.
Familia.
Truthfully, I expected Tee to rain down disapproval and hit me with more of that “You gotta do for you” stuff, but instead, she surprised me. Tee didn’t want to fight. I guess she felt like I did—sorta sad that our lunchtime ritual was over and that we hardly saw each other anymore. I also got the sense that she wanted to talk, to chat with a friend. A real friend, the kind you can tell stuff to that you can’t tell to other people. I looked into Tee-Ay’s eyes and felt bad. I mean, what kind of person was I that couldn’t even stay in touch with one of my closest peeps on the planet anymore? I could see she needed me, and I hadn’t been there for her.
You’re bad, Sonia, I thought. A really bad friend.
“Wanna share some fries?” Tee-Ay asked me.
I smiled.
“I would love to share some fries,” I replied.
“I’ll get the chips and sodas,” Tee-Ay answered, her face lighting up.
“I’ll get the fries,” I added eagerly, hoping that the cafeteria ladies had cooked them real well-done that day. Maybe our lunchtime ritual was about to be rekindled. We each took off in separate directions without even bothering to talk about where we’d meet back up. That’s because we both knew exactly where we’d meet: by the flagpole, in front of the library, at the third table to the left of the fence.
But like everything else in my life, things turned out different than I had planned. Violently different.
I never even saw it coming. All I felt was the hot pain searing through my skull. Blood flowed from my nose as i
f I had been smashed in the face with a hammer. My T-shirt was soaked in red liquid, my shoe fell off when I hit the ground, and the next day, I needed Tee-Ay to tell me what had happened, because after I got hit, I kinda blanked out.
I knew that it was Black History Month. The school had planned some special events and the day’s schedule had been changed so that we had an extended second period. This meant that for the first part of second period, half the school went to an MLK Day assembly in the auditorium while the other half went to class.
Then everybody was supposed to switch. Half the school was supposed to go to the auditorium while the first group went to class.
However, as Tee-Ay explained, “supposed to” and “did” are two different things on our campus. About a hundred million kids ditched class and went to both assemblies. It was chaos.
And then it was lunch. After lunch, we were all supposed to go to third period and finish out the rest of the day as usual.
Once again, this is what we were “supposed to” do. It’s not what happened.
During the second MLK assembly, which was packed with about a thousand more students than there should have been, some Latinos were goofing off during the performance and some blacks took it as “disrespect to their culture.”
A fight broke out. It turned into a five-on-five brawl. Then lunch started, and the next thing everyone knew, students were dividing up all over campus, throwing punches at one another for no reason other than the color of their skin.
Hispanics and blacks fought, while Samoans and Filipinos gathered their own and tried to stay unin-volved.
Kids were getting jumped left and right.
Of course, Tee-Ay and I had no idea any of this was happening when we’d planned to share french fries. When we made our plan, we’d had no idea that the whole campus was already out of control, seized by violence.
Security had broken up the first few fights, but the action had spread to other areas around the school—by the band room, behind the gym, in the science corridor. Troublemakers cruised the campus like packs of wolves, attacking smaller groups of students who weren’t with members of their own race to protect them. There just wasn’t enough security to contain all the fighters.
BAM! Tee-Ay told me how three black kids stomped a Hispanic near a garbage can.
POP! She explained how four Latinos caught a baseball player and hit him in the kidneys with a bat.
WHHHOOOOSSHH! Someone set a fire in a trash can.
HMMVVVZZZ!!!!!! HMMVVVZZZ!!!!!!
The school bell sounded.
“As if a bell was going to make all the students stop rioting,” Tee-Ay told me on the phone later. “It was teenage anarchy.”
As I said, the only thing I experienced of the race riot was fiery pain shooting through my brain. Once I got hit, I immediately fell to the ground, and from there, everything went fuzzy. Someone told Tee that it was all an accident, that a big Latino guy was running away from a group of black kids, and as he raced by, I turned the corner to buy some french fries, and he accidentally nailed me with an elbow to the nose. Though I never saw what hit me, some people got me to the nurse’s office, and then a neighbor came and gave me a ride to the emergency room.
I waited almost five hours for less than five minutes’ worth of medical attention. What a surprise: brown-skinned people aren’t getting the best health care in the United States. After all that time in the waiting room, they told me there was pretty much nothing they could do.
“Your nose isn’t broken, here’s some aspirin for the headache you’re about to have, and don’t worry when your eyes turn black and blue…because they will.” That was it for my treatment. No compassion. No tenderness. Not even a real doctor; it was a male nurse who treated me.
As we left the emergency room, I noticed there were at least fifty more patients waiting, bleeding, suffering, desperate to see a doctor. And none of these people were white folks either. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
“I look like a Mexican raccoon,” I told Tee-Ay over the phone.
“I’m sure you don’t,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “Well, maybe…but the cute kind, like a stuffed animal.”
I laughed, but smiling hurt my face. The circles under my eyes were a combination of purple, black, and blue, and my nose was sore, like I had been in a fifteen-round boxing match with a rhinoceros. I hung up with Tee-Ay, rubbed my temples, and felt major thumping going on in my cranium.
No matter how much I had to do around the casa, what I really needed was to lie down and get a bit of rest. At first I fought the desire to nap, and began gathering up some laundry, but when I bent over I felt dizzy, so I dropped the pile of clothes and went to the kitchen to take a few more aspirin. When I entered la cocina, I found Tia Luna eating some polio asado, roasted chicken. There was a shine of chicken grease around her mouth, and her fingers were slippery from sucking on the bones to get all the good meat out.
“Dios mío,” she said. “You look like a child of El Diablo. Qué pasa?”
I shook my head. With the way my brain was pounding I couldn’t deal with my stupid fat aunt’s stupid fat comments. I opened the bottle of aspirin and poured myself some agua.
“You ignore me?” she said.
“I got hit in the face at school, okay?” I answered. “There was a race riot.”
“Ah, the niggers,” she responded in español. “They love to cause trouble. Children of the devil, all of them.”
I glared at her.
“Don’t you give me the evil eye,” she said. “Especially when I speak the truth.”
She slurped on the bone of a wing.
“Why do you hate me?” I asked.
She paused.
“Really, why do you hate me?” I said again.
“Jesus teaches us not to hate, Sonia, so I don’t,” Tía Luna answered. “But you, mija, are the worst kind of Mexican there is.”
My aunt set down her chicken bones and reached for a cheapie paper towel.
“I mean, look at you. Busca. You turn your back on your culture, you disrespect your elders, and you have no moral strength. All you care about is you. Pfft. You’re an embarrassment to me and my kind, to real Mexican women.”
She looked at me with loathing. “You are an embarrassment to our people.” Tía Luna rolled up her paper towel and threw it in the garbage. “I’ll pray for you, Sonia,” she said, exiting the kitchen. “I will pray. But the devil is going to take you. You’re doomed.” A moment later, she left.
I stood there totally and completely stunned. Suddenly I started feeling nauseous. Then came the claustrophobia. If I didn’t get out of the house immediately, I was going to puke.
“Sonia…” came a voice. “Ayúdame!”
I grabbed my jacket and raced for the door.
“Sonia…”
I flew past Tía Luna, stepped outside, and let the cool air hit me in the face. It felt like I was suffocating. Breathe, Sonia. Breathe, I told myself.
After a minute, I caught my breath. And then I started walking.
Away.
chapter veinticuatro
I wandered the streets. I had nowhere to go, no dinero in my pocket, no place to be, and no one who understood. Though America is filled with millions of people, it’s also one of the loneliest places on earth. My feet moved along the sidewalks, but I had no idea where I was heading. I just walked.
I thought about killing myself. Seriously. Then I realized I didn’t know how to do such a thing. I’d need rope. Or a bridge to jump off. Or maybe razor blades. All I knew was that I wanted to die. Really die. I had been walking and walking for hours when suddenly I looked up, not knowing where I was.
Santiago’s Pet Store.
Impossible, I thought. How could such a thing happen? My heart was so heavy, I felt like I was wearing a wet sweater I couldn’t take off.
I turned and gazed in the front window, but instead of seeing kittens, I saw rabbits. Some were white, others were brown. One looked
light pink. My sadness grew. I decided to keep walking.
But I couldn’t.
Despite the fact that I didn’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo, I-was-pulled-there stuff, it seemed that I had no choice but to go inside. Why? Because somehow, some way, I had been pulled there.
But I couldn’t go in, I told myself.
Yet I had to.
Mi cabeza screamed at my legs to “run away,” but mi corazón—not screaming, but quiet like a whisper—told my body to “stay and enter.” And in the battle of heart and mind, heart always seems to win.
I opened the door and heard the jingle of the little bell. I was entering, raccoon eyes and all.
It took a few moments, but soon I heard his voice.
“Goodness, a long summer trip this was,” he said. Then there was a pause. “But it seems that only the rings under your eyes got a tan.”
Geraldo smiled. Seeing the gentle look in his eyes made me instantly start to tear up. He gently brushed the hair from my face.
“Your sadness has such beauty,” he said. “But you do know your true nature is like that of rainbows and butterflies, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer.
“I missed you deeply, Sonia.” He brushed back another piece of my hair and smiled with perfect, white teeth. “But now, well…you are back.”
“Weren’t you worried I’d never return?” I asked.
“Of course not,” he said with confidence. “Remember? It is written.”
I took a deep breath, the kind that stutters when you try to fill your lungs with air because of all the tears you’ve been crying. But the heaviness of the wet sweater on my heart was starting to lift.
“Wait,” Geraldo suddenly said. “I think there is someone else who would like to see you.”
“Frijolito,” I called out, unable to contain my joy when he returned with the cat. “Dios mío, look how you’ve grown.” I started scratching behind the kitten’s left ear, the one with the muscle that wasn’t strong enough to make it stand all the way up. Frijolito immediately started to purr.
The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez Page 13