The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  “I told her, you can’t trust Centrals.”

  “It’s true, you can’t trust Centrals, Sonia,” said Tía Luna, warning me not to see this boy anymore. “Inside the dark skin is where the devil does his best work.” My aunt reached over and started rubbing the twins in mi ama’s tummy. “Let us pray for light skin.”

  A sad truth about Mexican families is that the more light-skinned a baby is, the better it is treated in some homes. Lighter-skinned children get more positive attention, are given more opportunities, and often have an easier time in life. When a child is brown in the Latino community, being too brown is not a good thing.

  I stood there amazed by the fact that my drunkle was scoring major brownie points with mi ama and Tía Luna for ratting me out about Geraldo and being considered a great family member when five minutes earlier he had just been outside getting stoned with my teenage brother.

  “Gracias, Ernesto,” said mi ama. “It’s hard to keep an eye on your kids in El Norte.”

  “You don’t have to thank me,” said my drunkle as he went to the refrigerator and opened a beer. “Somos familia. We are family.”

  I glared at my drunkle with nothing but hate. Tía Luna saw the look in my eyes and disapprovingly shook her head.

  “And when your madre is at this point in her pregnancy, you bring this into the casa,” she said as everyone stared at me. “Pfft…Maybe you should just go and start dinner.”

  “Sí, Sonia,” said mi ama, nodding her head in agreement. “Go.”

  That evening the moon was full. And it was hot out. Usually, California sees the temperature get cool in the nighttime, but since Los Angeles is pretty much located in a desert, sometimes the weather stays really warm.

  We turned every fan in our house to high. Still, we were all uncomfortable.

  At about 11:45 p.m I was sitting at my study table in a T-shirt and pajama pants, trying, however pathetically, to get a bit of schoolwork done. Tackling chemistry problems while struggling to figure out all the elements of the periodic table when I had missed all kinds of important class lectures on science was as good a way as any to forget that I had just been told by my mother to never again see the love of my life.

  I heard the sound of a key in the door.

  “¿Papi?” I called out. Maybe he was getting home early.

  “Buenas,” came a raspy voice. It was my drunkle. He almost never came home from the bars this early. I saw him stumble inside after pulling his key out of the door. The entire casa was asleep.

  He smiled with red, bloodshot eyes and surveyed the room.

  “Tengo hambre,” he commanded, informing me that he was hungry. “Sonia, hazme comida.”

  I glared and paused, debating whether to cook for him or disobey. A moment later I threw down my pencil and stormed into the kitchen, figuring I’d quickly make him a quesadilla or something to get him off my back. I was too pissed off to be scared of him.

  But I should have been.

  “Estás enojada,” he said, telling me that he could see I was upset. But he said it with a smile. It was as if he found my anger attractive. I didn’t answer.

  “Don’t be angry, míja, but you must understand, it’s too easy to become an American whore.”

  Not being able to stand the sight him, I turned around and faced the stove. With my back to him, I lit the burner.

  “The problem is, you are too proud,” he said. “You forget who you are. Who your people are. Where you come from.”

  I placed a tortilla in the pan.

  “It’s good that I am here to watch over you. After all, Sonia…somos familia. We are family.”

  Suddenly I felt a hand reach under my shirt from behind and gently caress my breast.

  My brothers were asleep, mi ama was in bed, and mi papi wasn’t home from work yet. I froze.

  His finger started to work its way around my nipple. There was no voice in my throat with which to scream. I just stood there with my feet feeling as if they were locked to the floor. Coldness ran through my blood.

  “AAAAHHHHHHH!”

  Suddenly, there was a scream.

  “AAAAHHHHHHH!” came the cry again. “¡ES TIEMPO!”

  We both turned. Mi ama’s voice rang through the air like the shriek of an eagle. “It’s time!” she cried out. “It’s time!” Her water had just broke.

  Suddenly lights flipped on, and my brothers were running from room to room, Tía Luna was called on the phone, and the whole house exploded to life.

  Next thing I knew, we were off to the hospital. The twins were on their way.

  chapter veintiocho

  Mi ama needed a C-section to deliver the babies. There had been complications, and she had lost a lot of blood. Luckily, the twins were fine, but the quick look I got at mi ama after her surgical delivery told me she was in pretty bad shape. Her eyes were cloudy, and although she was medicated on all sorts of drugs, I could tell she was still in pain. I watched as they rolled her off to a recovery room while the babies were taken to the pediatric ward so they could be bathed, given some tests, and wrapped like mini-burritos in hospital blankets.

  Mi papi missed the birth—after all, it wasn’t Navidad number one or number two, and he had to finish his shift at the gym—but when he got to the hospital, the nurses let him hold the twins after he washed his hands. He held one new baby in each arm as if they were two big Easter baskets of special goodies from Jesus and Mary themselves. I’d never seen him smile so big in all my life.

  Watching the happiness on mi papi’s face made me realize that for him, more babies didn’t represent more mouths to feed. Nor did they represent more burden he’d need to carry, more hours he’d need to work, or less free time of his own to sit on the couch and watch TV or do things like play golf (which Mexicans never did. The closest we came to golf courses was watering the grass.). To mi papi, more babies represented more love. Pure love. He literally beamed with pride.

  “Aren’t they beautiful, Sonia?” he asked.

  “Si, Papi,” I said in a low voice. “Si.”

  Mi papi looked me over.

  “¿Qué pasa, mija?”

  I debated telling him.

  “Mija…” he asked again, seeing the concern on my face. “¿Qué?”

  “I…I just…”

  I didn’t know how to say it. He waited patiently.

  “Papi, did you smile like this when I was born?” I asked.

  Papi paused. A moment later he turned the twins to the left while he rotated his head to the right to speak to me privately.

  “Sshhh, don’t tell this to the babies, because I don’t want them to get jealous or anything, but for you, my tortuguita, I smiled the most.”

  A tear came to my eye. Mi papi always knew the right thing to say.

  “Ahorita dígame, mija. ¿Qué pasa?”

  Again he asked me what was wrong.

  “Nada, Papi. Nada,” I answered. “I’m just worried about Ama, that’s all.”

  Despite the complications, mi ama had stabilized, but it was hours before we could see her. When we did, her eyes were all foggy, and I am not sure if she even knew we were in the room.

  Mi ama’s C-section had been a big surgery. However, in El Norte, a big surgery doesn’t mean a big hospital stay. Not when you’re an uninsured Mexican, it doen’t.

  Most C-sections require at least four days in the recovery ward. Some women stay for a week or even ten days. Mi ama was sent home after only two-and-a-half days because the county hospital needed the bed space.

  “Yet she’s still in pain,” mi papi protested.

  “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “But you’re the doctor.”

  “Doctors don’t make these decisions anymore, Mr. Rodriguez. Administrators do.”

  El doctor began to scribble on a notepad. “Here’s a prescription,” he said. “These pills are for pain.”

  My father looked up with deep concern in his eyes. The doctor looked back with sympathy. “ho siento
, senor, pero mis manos están atadas,” he answered. Then he turned to me and shrugged his shoulders. “My hands are tied,” he repeated, and walked off to attend to more patients.

  A few hours later, after pages and pages of paperwork that I had to fill out and Papi had to sign, mi ama was discharged and sent home to bed rest, telenovelas, and little orange pills that were supposed to make the pain go away. Of course, I never did say anything to mi papi about my drunkle. I guess the opportunity never presented itself again. Besides, who had time for conversation? As the twins’ baby nurse, I barely had time to pee. There were diapers to change, feedings to give, clothing to wash, bottles to rinse, late-night rockings, early-morning poops, and fits of crying that seemed to come out of nowhere and then stop for no reason at all. And since mi ama was trying to recuperate from major surgery, I had been turned into a human caregiving machine.

  There were three of them, and only one of me, and I was getting my butt kicked like never before. If I got three hours’ worth of sleep in a row, I was lucky. I had become a zombie.

  Making matters worse, every male in mi casa was completely worthless except for mi papi, who had to return to work after missing only two days. After all, there’s no such thing as a paternity leave for under-the-table towel washers in a sports club. Also, I was sure that Tía Luna was purposefully dragging her feet every time she tried to help just so I would have to work even harder. I wasn’t able to shower, I missed every prearranged meeting time with Geraldo, and even though I had ten days off for spring break, when classes resumed after the holiday, I still could not make it to escuela. If I had been barely hanging on in school last semester, this semester I was entirely dropping the ball.

  But what could be done?

  “Sonia .. .” mi ama called out. I stared at another round of bottles that needed to be washed. Two weeks had passed since the twins had come home. “Me duele,” she cried out. “I am in pain.”

  She wanted her pills. I filled a glass with agua, unscrewed the childproof safety top off the medicine bottle, and removed two small super-powerful orange painkillers.

  One for her, one for me.

  chapter veintinueve

  A few nights later I heard a rock at the window. My stomach fluttered. It had to be Geraldo. It had been over three weeks since I’d seen him, and I had not returned any of his phone calls. I’d been ignoring him.

  Then I heard a second rock. Geraldo must have been outside looking at me through our cheap drapes while I had my study light on. I shook my head at the thought of it. My study light used to be for school; these days, the only time I used it was when I was folding baby laundry. How sad, I thought. I ignored the tap-tap-tap of the pebbles against the window, hoping Geraldo would get the message and just go away.

  But of course he didn’t. Instead, he moved up to throwing stones. When one crashed so loud that it almost broke the window, I knew it was just a matter of time before he heaved some kind of Fred Flintstone-size boulder. It was no use ignoring him. Though I couldn’t see out into the night, I turned, waved, and pointed to the back of the house. Like it or not, I was going to have to meet him behind the Dumpsters.

  I guess I’d always known this moment would come. I stepped out back and took a deep breath. He leaned in for a kiss. I turned away.

  “We cannot see each other,” I said coldly.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What’s not to understand? Mexicans and Salvadorans don’t mix. Stripes and plaids don’t mix. Me and you, we don’t mix.”

  “But where is this coming from?”

  “Because I’m a stupid beaner and you’re a stupid Central, and this whole stupid thing will never work, okay? You must leave, Geraldo.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You must. Now.”

  “I love you.”

  “Cállate!” I snapped. “Shut up. Don’t talk like that.”

  “But you know I love you, Sonia. You are my destiny.”

  I paused and looked back at the house of mi familia.

  “But you are not mine,” I replied. For the first time ever, I saw that Geraldo’s spirit had been wounded.

  “Hasta luego, Geraldo. Y buena suerte. Good luck.”

  Without another word, I started inside.

  “We were born to be together, Sonia. Born to be like the ink that writes the pages of a great love story. And nothing will ever tear us apart. Nothing, you hear?”

  I closed the door behind me, turned the latch, and told myself I would never go out there to meet him again.

  Never.

  The truth is I would have thought saying good-bye to the love of my life would have hurt more than it did. I guess all the hurt from everything else had started to numb me.

  Like six weeks later, when my report card informed me that I had earned F’s in all five of my AP classes, and an F in Computer Graphics, too, I didn’t get all emotional about it. I just made the only logical choice I could.

  I dropped out of school at the start of senior year.

  “Yes, I am here to check out,” I said to the woman working in the front office. If I had expected anyone to care, my delusions were completely shattered when the secretary responded without even looking up from the notepad she was writing on.

  “You need to see Mrs. Javellano,” she replied with a point of her pencil down the hall.

  I headed toward the office to meet a lady whose name I had never heard before. When I got to a door with a sign that had her name on it, I stopped and knocked.

  “Yes,” came a voice.

  “Hi, I’m here to check out,” I said.

  A middle-aged Latina wearing a nice, colorful pantsuit and fashionably thin eyeglasses stopped what she was doing, paused, and looked at me with suspicion. “And your name is?” she asked as she waved me into her office and motioned for me to take a seat.

  “Sonia,” I answered. “Sonia Rodriguez. ID number 4046351.” I told her that extra bit of info about my ID because there were probably at least five other girls named Sonia Rodriguez who attended this school.

  “And why do you wish to drop out, Sonia?” she asked.

  Like, why do you care? I thought. But I didn’t say that. After all, there was no need to be rude.

  “I just do,” I answered.

  Mrs. Javellano typed my information into her computer and took a moment to look over my records. “AP classes, huh? And a history of good grades. Is there something going on, Sonia? Something you want to talk about?”

  I looked down. “I just want to check out,” I replied. I knew I was allowed to. I was old enough to not need my parents’ permission. In fact, I didn’t even have to notify the school. I could have just stopped coming, like other kids did, but I didn’t want to create extra work for anybody. I might be a high-school dropout, but at least I’m a high-school dropout who took into consideration the feelings of other people.

  “Have you thought about home studies?” Mrs. Javellano asked.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I’m serious,” she said.

  “Isn’t that a program for kids who are on probation from juvenile hall or girls who are pregnant?”

  “So you’re not pregnant?”

  “No,” I answered. And who was she to ask such a thing, anyway? She was just some paper pusher in an office no one ever visited. I glared at her, but she didn’t take any offense. I guess I wasn’t the type of person who had a really mean glare. Instead, she looked back at me with warm, chocolate-colored eyes.

  “A lot of students choose home studies as an option to graduate. I mean, who knows? Maybe one day you’ll decide you want to go to community college or something.”

  I hesitated. Community college? She must have seen the spark in my eye.

  “Es verdad,” she replied. “Look, mija, we have got to get more Latinas walking these halls with diplomas instead of babies.”

  “I told you, I’m not pregnant,” I said.

  “Bueno,” she answered. “Then do me a favor, try ho
me studies. I don’t know what it is,” she said, “but I have a feeling about you. A good feeling.”

  I lowered my eyes and stared at the floor.

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” I said.

  “But I do,” she answered. Mrs. Javellano then reached across her desk and handed me a packet. “Will you try?” she asked.

  I didn’t want to be rude, so I nodded my head yes.

  On the way back to mi casa, I looked through the first series of worksheets Mrs. Javellano had given me and realized how simple the assignments would be. There was no challenge to the material at all. Everything was so easy. All I’d need was the time to sit down and actually fill in the answers.

  But of course, I wouldn’t get it.

  chapter treinta

  I arrived home to mi ama and Tía Luna, who were both in a state of panic. Apparently, my drunkle had been arrested by the policía for attempting to steal a car stereo out of a BMW.

  Personally, I was glad to hear he was locked up, and I hoped they’d throw away the key. After all, this was the fourth time he’d been busted for the same type of crime. The last time it had happened was during my sophomore year, when it cost me six days of class and resulted in my getting into a huge fight about familia and personal responsibility with Tee-Ay. We ended our differences maturely, though.

  I told her to mételo en tu culo, stick it up your ass.

  I thought about my drunkle and shook my head. ¡Jesucristo, que estúpido! I said to myself. Didn’t he know about car alarms?

  “Poor Ernesto,” my aunt moaned as she contemplated the idea of my drunkle being locked behind bars. Thank goodness one of the twins started crying in the other room because I couldn’t bear to listen to Tía Luna make any more excuses about how her brother was a victim of society and had been forced into a life of crime because racist white men were always keeping down the brown man in El Norte.

  After a diaper change, I returned a few minutes later carrying Cecilia, my baby sister, in my arms.

  “They are threatening him with jail and deportation,” Tía Luna whined, still talking about it.

  “Pobrecito,” replied mi ama with an up-and-down shake of her head.